Episode 60
· 36:33
[00:00:00] Welcome to the Resilient Schools Podcast. I'm your host, Jethro. Jones Resilience Schools is a proud member of the BE Podcast Network. The only podcast network out there with a show for every role.
And today we have Dr. Karen Eck Brandon on our program. She's a host of the Defacto Leaders podcast, also on the B podcast network. And she speaks specifically to related service providers and there's a lot of great stuff there. She. Focuses on empowering therapists and educators to design interventions that support language literacy and executive functioning.
She has a doctorate in special education and director of special education and assistive technology credentials from Illinois State University, as well as a master's in Bachelor's [00:01:00] from Illinois State. University as well in speech and language pathology. She spent 14 years in the school systems and has held various roles in leadership, in higher education, teaching and mentoring clinicians.
As I mentioned, she's the host of the Defacto Leaders Podcast, where she shares evidence-based practices, her own experiences in guest interviews on topics relating to education and healthcare reform, as well as. A bunch of stuff about literacy this month that we'll talk about later in the show. She currently holds a management role with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.
So Karen, welcome to Resilient Schools. So glad to have you.
So glad to be here
And when we started talking about the literacy stuff, I was like, Karen definitely needs to be in on this. And you didn't disappoint. You got seven awesome people that we'll talk about later in the show to come on your show.
And I encourage everybody to go take a listen.
What stands out to you from your
recent focus on literacy?
Ooh, a tough one [00:02:00] that we're starting off with here. So I would say, I. The thing that I am shouting from the rooftops is just that we have to avoid black and white thinking and just stop thinking of pendulum swings and like getting on our soapbox there. Like I just, I see so many people who are like, this is the magic bullet for literacy, or it's this or it's that.
And what I really tried to do with this series is just tackle it from. All kinds of angles. Like, yes, we should be supporting kids' vocabulary and we should be thinking about engagement, and we should thinking about, we should be thinking about making learning fun and playful and age appropriate for those younger students. But also, yes, it can be explicit and rigorous. And that doesn't necessarily mean that it's not age appropriate and it can't be fun. And so. I wanted to just really get a lot of different ideas, but then also think [00:03:00] about not just what are we doing in in our direct instruction, but what are those other things that are impacting literacy besides what happens at school?
Because there are so many things that, and again, part of the reason why we've got all this, these different opinions is that there are so many things that we just can't control. I like to help people figure out what is one thing that I can control. So with some of the topics that I talked about relating to policies and just different initiatives you can do with engaging the community and getting people engaged with literacy, I really wanted to think about those pieces as well.
In addition to what is evidence-based practices,
So, you know what I think the magic bullet is for literacy since you brought it up.
what is it?
It is paying attention to every single student and not looking at the big data of how are all the kids progressing, but how is each individual student progressing? If you're paying attention to that, I think you're gonna see how to help each one of [00:04:00] those kids.
But if you're saying, Hey, we're doing good. We got 95% of our kids reading or meeting this benchmark, that 5% of kids. They're not cutting the mustard. So you gotta focus on every student individually, not everybody as a whole. So, what do you think? Is that all right?
Yeah, I think so.
We're gonna get to my interview with Karen here in just a moment..
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So Karen, your specialty is working with a additional service providers in a school. And so with that, when it comes to this idea of literacy, sometimes people think, or it seems that if they are not the English teacher or the. Main teacher that they don't have a role in this. How do you manage getting the whole team to work together to support a student's literacy, even if they are someone different, like a physical therapist or an occupational therapist?
How do you get everybody on the same team?
Where I start with thinking about this is that it's. If you're in [00:05:00] that related service provider role, and so I'm a speech pathologist and we do have a very specific role to play in literacy that gets very messy. And so from a very high level, how I think about and language and literacy and what are we all supposed to be doing, because a lot of people in that role that I work with will ask me what do I do with my students when I have. One student in front of me, or a group of students in front of me and we're doing therapy or some kind of an intervention. But it's really hard to answer that question if you don't understand where you fit in to the whole team. So the shift that I like to help people make is not that we're ignoring your discipline, that you know you, everybody has their specific area of expertise that you do need to understand.
If you're a physical therapist, you have specific protocols. That you need to work on with your students that you bring to the table that nobody else knows how to do. Same with occupational therapists, the school psychologist, the social [00:06:00] worker, the speech pathologist. You know, and I could keep going on with that list.
So yes, I think that when, especially when you're starting with that role, you have to understand, like, feel confident in your role that's specific to you. But when we're thinking about literacy. It's, you almost have to flip flop the way that you think about it. And instead of saying therapy planning or lesson planning, say service delivery planning. So here is a student what does their service plan look like at a bigger picture when it comes to literacy? What are all the pieces that need to be in place? And then we can start thinking about. What is the general education teacher doing? What is the special ed teacher doing? What is the speech pathologist doing? And yes, we're considering their areas, their areas of expertise where this, these are the skills that they have while we're slotting that in, but there's still some flexibility because you have to think [00:07:00] about how does your team work together based on the resources that you have in your building. Um, based on. I mean, lots of other things, like based on individual student factors, the setup in your building. So I like to think about it that way and kind of flip flop it for people, because then sometimes on one team it might look a little bit different than another team, but you can figure up. You can figure out how to kind of divide and conquer that way.
If you start to think about the service plan before you start to get in the weeds. And again, you kind of have to toggle back and forth between those two things in reality. But that's the shift that I like to help people make because it starts to help to answer their question a little bit more clearly.
Yeah, I really like that idea of service delivery planning versus lesson planning, because when you talk about service delivery, it's about how do we serve this student with what they individually need rather than, how do I teach this [00:08:00] particular lesson? And that's zooming out and taking a little bit bigger.
Bigger view of it than just like, I need to make sure that they're hitting their goals in my specific area, but seeing that it's everybody working together to help that student overall, not just on that one particular thing.
Mm-Hmm. Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah. So, so this is a really fascinating perspective getting someone else's viewpoint who's not a traditional teacher because you see things differently. And one of the things that I noticed when working with students who had different needs in my schools was that. They and I wanna talk a little bit about vocabulary, because vocabulary is one of the things that needs, kids need vocabulary to become more literate.
And depending on what your life experiences that contributes to the vocabulary that you have and. What I think is interesting is that, for example, kids who have had lots of medical interventions or [00:09:00] medical issues have a different level of vocabulary because they've been exposed to more than just normal run of the mill kids who just get their yearly checkups.
When it comes to teaching kids how to read, how much of. Vocabulary is really necessary. And how much does do some of those unique circumstances actually benefit the kids with their comprehension? Because they may understand things or understand root words better than other kids and that their medical challenges may be seen as a deficit, but in actuality they could be a benefit.
Does that question make sense? I kind of rambled a little
It, it does. It does. And so I guess at a very high surface level experiences, having a lot of different experiences is absolutely what kids need to build vocabulary among other things. Exposure to books and reading is also something that has an impact on vocabulary.
The way that parents dialogue with their kids also has a big [00:10:00] impact as far as. The impact on vocabulary when we're thinking about reading specifically like, when you're looking at how well are you able to comprehend when you're reading, if you don't know the words in a text, and the example that I like to give is I had this.
C Craniofacial anomalies class that I had to take in grad school. It was the class that everybody dreaded. You know, everybody's freaking out about it. And so reading the textbook, you're reading the paragraph over and over again. You find yourself spacing out. You realize that your comprehension is suffering because the vocabulary is so dense, but I'm reading Harry Potter or something like that.
The effort required, because the vocabulary is familiar, is it's a lot easier, so you need about 90 to 95%. You need to know about 90 to 95% of the words in a text that you're reading in order to comprehend it. So it does have a big impact. But then the other thing is that when it comes to reading, there are other things that [00:11:00] impact your vocabulary development besides just. Knowing what a word means. So even things like print exposure, understanding, like you said, roots and bases and the phonological characteristics of words. So like understanding that words are made up of sounds and there's print symbols that go with them. Those things also can help build our vocabulary and the impact decoding.
So all of that has to fit together because if you. Are Like for example, if you're reading something and you don't have background knowledge about what you're reading, your comprehension will suffer. Or if you are struggling so much to figure out words in the sentence and kind of thinking about what they mean, then it's hard to get the big picture. If you're not sure of how the sentences go together then, and you're having a hard time comprehending at the sentence level, then that's difficult. But then also if you're resorting a lot of resources to. Decoding words, [00:12:00] then you're devoting cognitive resources that are taken away from your comprehension.
So all of that, I know that when people think about vocabulary, they think, do you know what the word means? But all those things I just mentioned, like your ability to use words in sentences, your ability to understand the sound systems and those characteristics of words. And what words mean and how to use them in context.
That's really what we're talking about. So there's a lot to it. And yes, I mean, it has a huge impact on literacy and this, not just reading, but writing and spelling as well.
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So something really interesting about that I want to come back to this 90 to 95% vocabulary because this really. It impacted me when I started learning another language, and I realized very quickly that almost everything was about whether or not I understood the words that if I had to try to figure out what the words were in Russian the second [00:13:00] language that I speak, then it was.
It just made everything so much more difficult. But if I drilled myself on vocabulary words and understood what those words were, then I could understand the gist of things so much better when I knew more words. And really
at a certain point it just became, do I know the words that people are saying?
And especially when it comes to reading Russian, that's where I. Knowing the words just helps tremendously. And I didn't understand that at any point before I learned Russian. And now that I do it, I get that better. So I had the occasion yesterday to to read something in French, which I don't speak French at all.
And I was, I did terribly at it, but I knew. It was something that I had said numerous times before. So I was comfortable with the content, but not with the language. So I didn't know any of the words or how to pronounce them, and I did the best that I could and I [00:14:00] asked the person that I was speaking to later, after I read this thing in French and I said, how did I do?
And he was like, it was terrible, but he understood what it was and I said it with the right emotion and the right. Feeling that to go with it and so I didn't have to say it perfectly. He could still understand it. I just sounded like a total American English speaker that had no idea what he was doing.
And that's okay. That the fact of the matter was it needed to be said and. I was comfortable reading it, comfortable enough reading it that I could butcher it get through it well enough. So I didn't know any of the words, so I don't really know what I was saying except I, it was translated so I knew what I was saying, but I didn't know which words were what.
So anyway, I just thought that was a really interesting experience to, to use the language but not actually know what I was saying in French, but know what I was saying in English. Does that make sense at all?
Yeah, 'cause because it was something that I had [00:15:00] said many times before in English, and I just needed to say it in French to someone who spoke French. So I basically just did a translate of what I would always say and then said it to them. And he was like, your French was terrible, but I got it because
like, and I knew you were sincere because you knew what you were saying and that was fine.
Yeah, I mean, even just having a base of vocabulary, even if you are not, that, that grammar isn't important, but that it's really your base for meaning. All of these things need to work together. If you have, the more components you have to work with, the easier it is to communicate.
That really is what we're talking about when we're saying reading and writing. It's a form of communication.
So.
And that is what I taught my students as an English teacher, that this is this class is about communicating effectively. And that means reading, writing, speaking, listening, understanding what people are saying and what people are writing, all that I think is important. So [00:16:00] as we're talking about literacy, one of the things that we want is a joy of learning.
Are there any things that get in the way of that? Some people say that phonics, for example, teaching phonics makes it so kids don't like reading. Is there any truth to that or is that not the case?
I would I I would say when we look at what components do kids need in order to effectively learn to read, phonics is one of those essential components now. Can some kids figure out a lot of that learning implicitly, yes, some kids can, but for the kids who can't, if you don't give them that explicit instruction, reading becomes very frustrating and it becomes very difficult to have a love of something. If you haven't been taught how to do it, you ha you haven't developed that confidence and you can't do it successfully. So it's. Like, I think that there's this idea that if we just expose kids [00:17:00] to books and make it fun and engaging and make it interesting and you know, kind of like play games and things like that, which all that stuff is fine too.
And of course we should expose kids to interesting books, but. We do need to directly teach kids to decode. There's this concept of skills that are biologically primary and biologically secondary. So language, oral language is biologically primary, meaning that we are wired for it. So yes, there are certain kids with disabilities that do need more facilitation to learn language, but primarily we can really learn a lot of language through exposure. And we learn a lot of it through implicit learning. So it's, again, it's something that we are wired to do. Now, reading and writing, we can learn to do, but again, we're not wired for it, so we have to map those print symbols on top of our oral language. So if we are [00:18:00] relying on implicit learning, we're going to miss a lot of kids, and that's going to make school very frustrating because if you can't. Learn to read and write, that's going to be a huge barrier to a lot of other classes as well in school. And then there's a lot of times where we start to see that present as behavior problems because kids they learn to kind of get around if they slip through the cracks.
They learn how to distract the teacher when it's their turn to read out loud. And then that it looks like they're a behavior problem when really maybe it's. There's something that has to do with learning going on there. So again, it's, I know that on paper it sounds like phonics is not super exciting, but there's. A large body of research that supports that. And again, it isn't just about phonics when we're talking about explicit reading instruction, we also wanna think about morphology. So again, roots, base bases, suffixes a fixes some of those bigger structures, the vocabulary, the syntax. So all of those things. But but [00:19:00] yeah, I mean, I think that people think of phonics instruction as we're. taking young children and having them sit at the table for three hours and do boring worksheets, and that's not good. Teachers know how to make
instruction engaging, so
that's not what we're talking about here.
It can be very playful in that process
Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. So, more on that subject that you just talked about there in my interview with Irene Daria on Transformative Principal where we talk about
how her school, her son's school was not teaching reading. Was doing things poorly and how she went through that process and did all that.
So that's another one of our literacy focuses. That would be an interesting listen if you're more interested in that. So the other thing,
When it's time for reading. Is it, is fluency the goal or is comprehension the goal? Because when I was an [00:20:00] assistant principal, it sure seemed like fluency was the goal.
And so how do we understand the difference between those two?
so that's a really good question. And I would say on the surface, of course, comprehension is the goal, I have seen that be taken. I don't wanna say out of context, but misinterpreted. So fluency is one way to measure automaticity, but there are many kids who are able to read and comprehend even though their fluency might be slower. Or there are students who have pretty good fluency but don't have the comprehension. So I would say it is a sliver of information that we can use. Just one piece of information. Now, comprehension, of course, we want comprehension and expression to be the goal, but it's the destination. It's not always the vehicle for getting there, because what I have [00:21:00] seen happen with some of those people in the related service provider roles who are getting referrals for students with comprehension difficulties, and this is what I experienced when I was in the school, is that. The teacher will make the referral and say, this student is doing poorly on their reading comprehension. Maybe they're also having some issues with writing and kind of the overall organization of their writing and the flow and expressing their ideas, and they're not able to retell and explain and state the main idea and all of those things. So what the therapist will do sometimes is they'll, their therapy will be working on stating the main idea and inferencing, and again, comprehension strategies. But if the problem is that the student is either, maybe they don't have good word attack skills and they're using a lot of cognitive resources to try to decode, then that could cause a comprehension issue.
Or maybe they don't have a solid vocabulary. And that is [00:22:00] impacting their ability to get the big picture. Or maybe they don't have a good sense of sentence structure, and I can get into some more specifics on syntax in a minute if we want to. But if you can't, if you can't comprehend at the word and sentence level, then it's very difficult to comprehend entire paragraphs and retell entire stories and really get the gist.
So if your therapy. Your intervention, your classroom instruction is solely focused on comprehension. Because comprehension is the end goal. You are not really building those foundational skills that might be the root cause. It doesn't mean we should stop working on those high level things as well because those are also very important.
But we have to understand the underlying cause. And that's really when I work with speech pathologists who are trying to figure out their role in language and literacy. That is probably one of the most common challenges that I find with SLPs that come into my program is they're focusing on [00:23:00] this symptom instead of the cause.
So again, they're working on like wh questions and stating the main idea in therapy, and that wasn't working in the classroom. So clearly we have to add another piece here, and that goes back to what I was saying about service planning because. It might make sense for the teacher to be doing a lot of those comprehension strategies, but then when we think about where does the SLP fit in, well, here's this missing piece in this service plan that we need to put over here.
Yeah, that, that's a good way to tie that back. Let's talk about the sentences a little bit.
Yeah.
Yeah. Um, so, apparently I was DMing with this one, this guy who. Had followed me and he called me the syntax queen. So I guess that's what I'm known as in the SLP world. So when I did my doctoral work, I did a lot with metacognition and vocabulary, and so that's where I did all the research on how much does vocabulary impact comprehension.
And so my study was really [00:24:00] about. About getting to those word meanings and you know, how can we help kids to start using some internal dialogue and self-talk so that they can be more aware of word meanings. But there's also this, like when you're talking about understanding just content of words, there's content, but then there's structure. So you need to know. What words mean, but you also need to know what words do and how to arrange them in sentences. So you've probably noticed when you were learning Russian, and I noticed this as I'm trying to learn Spanish, when the syntax is different from what you're used to, when the words aren't in the place that you expect them to be, it can really throw you off. So, there are certain sentence types. That have an impact on comprehension and tend to be very difficult for people who are learning English as well as people who have [00:25:00] conditions like dyslexia, developmental language disorder. So again, if they have a disability that impacts language, things like complex sentences.
So anything that uses a subordinate clause is very difficult. Anything where there's an embedded clause in the middle of the sentence is very difficult. Anything that is. voice, multiple clauses, because what it requires you to do is really pay attention to the function words. So things like the conjunctions words like because before, after, or even things like prepositions.
So those other words that. When you're defining them, you really have to explain, what is this word doing here? Not what does this word mean? And that is what really helps us to take the content and structure it together. Yeah, and I mean, I could keep going, I could keep going with that one but I'll
Yeah.
Well, let me just give a good example of this. One of my favorite books is Nicholas Nickleby by Charles [00:26:00] Dickens, and it is a book about the education system in Victorian England. And what's so fascinating about it is that there are many very long sentences in that book,
and one in particular.
I certainly am not going to be able to recite it, but it is 126 words in one sentence with
And it's not a run
and it's not a run-on, it's like a complete sentence that makes total sense when you understand it, but it's just masterful and I love it. It's so good and what I think is so amazing about it is that it's written so well that you can understand it very clearly.
As you're reading, you don't notice that it's that long until you're like actually paying attention and
really
yeah, it's fascinating. So I will try to find it and send it to you directly and maybe I'll put it in the, I'll quote it in the show notes here so people can see what I'm talking about. But it's just really fascinating that does [00:27:00] work.
And you can understand it and it can be very complex, but at the same time it's not that complex where it's. Where it's impossible to understand, and you could have broken it up into separate sentences, but it also works to be just one sentence. and that's something that as I've worked with kids who have struggled with this comprehension stuff is that sometimes those things don't it is like nobody knows that's what they really need.
You know what I mean?
Yeah. Well, and I think people are really catching onto vocabulary, but syntax gets lost a little bit because people think of grammar, which some, there are certain grammatical errors, as you probably noticed in your interaction when you were speaking French, that you can actually get. By with some grammatical errors when you're learning a new language, doesn't mean that grammar isn't important and it doesn't give us additional information about meaning, but there are certain linguistic skills or [00:28:00] structures that have a bigger impact on comprehension than others.
So, I mean that, that's part of it as well. And I don't know I think one of the things from the. The lens of somebody who's specifically working on language, it can be really difficult to figure out, like when somebody is, have a really solid sense of syntax, what you'll see is that you don't always see the errors as a parent.
And so like you almost have to see what grammatical somebody's making to figure out how to diagnose it. But what sometimes happens is that kids will learn to avoid. So they're not making errors because they're not trying the skill because they don't have those structures. So what they'll do is when they're writing, it'll be lots of really simple sentences that are kind of repetitive, or an entire page that is one sentence in one run on sentence, because they don't know where to, they don't know how to form those clauses and be flexible with how they structure it. And so [00:29:00] that it's a little bit difficult to say, Hey, they don't understand. How to make a clause, how to use subordination and how to structure this. And so I always encourage with SLPs specifically when they're trying to diagnose, and this is something that teachers could do as well, a counterintuitive way to assess. Syntax is sentence repetition. So like I tell you a sentence and you repeat it back to me, and people think, well, you told 'em the answer that, but really what happens is if you don't have a solid sense of that sentence structure, you're gonna, you're going to forget it. Like you might, it might not go in and you might not remember it and to be able to repeat it back to me, or you might in your head kind of transpose it a little bit and then repeat it back the way that you would say it. And not necessarily get the details correct. So again, obviously you should be using other assessment tools besides that, like looking at their writing and their other assessment scores [00:30:00] and less structured, more dynamic things. But that is one way that you can kind of pinpoint and get some more information when you're like. What's going on here? Like something is people always say something's not right, and I can't put my finger on
And I always think of syntax as a vocabulary skill as well. And not everybody categorizes it that way, but that was kind of my big revelation
Work where I was like, I didn't think about syntax.
You know, we need to structure all these words.
Yeah that's interesting. I haven't thought about that like that either. But it, as you talk about it, that does make sense. Well this has been a great conversation. Thank you again for being part of Resilient Schools. This is part of our focus on National Literacy Month in partnership with Reading is Fun.
Reading is fundamental. Excited to be partnering with you on this and you've got a lot of great interviews on your show. Do you want to talk a little bit about those that
That are on the Defacto Leaders podcast?
yes. Let me see. Like I said, I, [00:31:00] I have, I'm gonna start with the first one. I have Dr. Jan Witz who is the CEO of spell links. And we talk about, we really get into morphology and the idea of. Not just the reading rope, but the kind of the concept of the writing rope. And she, she presents a framework where she's expanding on the reading rope called the Language Literacy Network, where we really talk about reading, writing, and just the language connection.
And then I talked to Anna Geiger from the Measured Mom. We get into the idea of play-based versus playful learning and talking about some of those myths about is phonics going to be boring for kids? And she shares some really great stories there. Let's see, what's my number three interview? Tom Parton, a speech pathologist who worked with students at the secondary level just talking about. Dyslexia mandates and how we use that terminology in schools and how we think about supporting students who still do not have strong decoding skills at the high school level, and how important it is [00:32:00] to not give up on those students. I have Susan Brady who on to talk about book distribution and starting book clubs, Dr. Molly Ness, talking about think alouds and read alouds and some of the great. work that she has done regarding book distribution as well. Dr. Carla McGregor to talk about developmental language disorder and that the role of DLD in literacy.
And we also get into some specific. Legal mandates as well. And then Dr. Shameika Stewart, where we're talking about the school to prison pipeline and sorting, supporting youth that are at risk for involvement with the justice system and how literacy plays into that. Let me think if I, let me go through my mental list in my head.
Did I say seven people?
I think so
So,
if we, for forgot anybody, we're sorry. Yeah, no Yeah. So
all of mine off the top of my
yes, I'm [00:33:00] very excited about that lineup. Like I said I had a lot of, it's, this is my jam, so of course I had to. It's what I would be talking about normally on the show, but I specifically made a point to emphasize some topics that I'd been wanting to talk about for a while.
So
And topics that you are a super nerd about also, which is
yeah, for sure I am.
Yeah. Very good. Alright, well, thank you so much. Defacto Leaders is the podcast defacto leaders.com. Your website, dr karen speech.com. People should definitely go and talk. Check that out. If they are a related service provider, absolutely go check it out.
But even if you're not, there's a lot of good resources and information there. Anything else you'd like to plug or shout out while we're here?
Well, I could share my sentence structure guide since we
that. If people do wanna learn more about that, it says that it's for speech pathologists, but it's for anybody who wants to learn about syntax and supporting kids. I've had [00:34:00] teachers reach out to me and tell me it was helpful.
You can download that@drkarenspeech.com slash sentence structure.
Okay. Got it. Okay. All right. Thank you so much for being part of Resilient Schools today, Karen.
thank you so much for having me.
You rock. You're amazing.
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