Literacy Talks

Dyslexia Talks: Insights from Researcher and Professor of Psychology Tim Odegard

• Reading Horizons • Season 6 • Episode 11

Share episode

In this insightful conversation, Donell Pons sits down with Dr. Tim Odegard, a leading expert in dyslexia research. Odegard shares his personal journey as an individual with severe dyslexia and the challenges he faced with limited support and accommodations throughout his education. He also discusses his extensive professional background, including his training in cognitive sciences, neuroimaging, and dyslexia intervention. 

Odegard provides valuable insights into the legislative efforts in Tennessee and other states to improve reading instruction and support for students with dyslexia, emphasizing the importance of creating an enabling context for policy implementation. This episode offers a unique perspective on the complexities of dyslexia and the critical role of empathy, advocacy, and evidence-based practices in literacy education.

This is part four of the Literacy Talks miniseries Dyslexia Talks, hosted by Donell Pons.

SHOW NOTES
Literacy Leaders:

Resources:


Chat about this episode in The Science of Reading Collective.

Explore the Reading Horizons Discovery® Product Suite.

Access past show notes.

Read the transcripts.

Narrator:

Welcome to Literacy Talks, the podcast for literacy leaders and champions everywhere, brought to you by Reading Horizons. Literacy Talks is the place to discover new ideas, trends, insights and practical strategies for helping all learners reach reading proficiency. Our hosts are Stacy Hurst, a professor at Southern Utah University and Chief Academic Advisor for Reading Horizons. Donell pons, a recognized expert and advocate in literacy, dyslexia and special education, and Lindsay Kemeny, an elementary classroom teacher, author and speaker. Now let's talk literacy.

Donell Pons:

So this conversation today is going to be one of my favorites. I'm talking to Dr Tim Odegard, and I'm going to let you kind of give your own background to everyone, and kind of tell them what you do. But I just wanted to introduce you by saying that for years, my husband and I have kind of followed you a little bit not to the stalking level, but at conferences, you actually came into our sort of of a world when we were at an IDA conference, and it was years ago. We were in Oregon at the time, and my husband would often pop into a session, and then he'd tell me if he thought I ought to come to that session, because you just can't hear everything at once. And I remember he sent me a text and he said, I don't know who this guy is, but he really knows his stuff. And so that was a really high compliment. And I remember coming down, popping into the back and listening, and also being very impressed, not only with your knowledge, Tim, but your deep understanding of this space, of what it means to have dyslexia, what it means to work with people who have dyslexia. So really appreciated that, why don't you give our listeners a little bit of your background? Tim, it's pretty extensive,

Tim Odegard:

it is. So my personal background is, I'm a human first, obviously I understand learning differences, personally as an individual with learning differences. Mine happens to be reading and spelling, which we characterize and label with dyslexia. Was really hard to teach those things too, and it's been something that I'm pretty severe. So it's not just that I didn't get the kind of structural literacy intervention I needed. It's also just mine really have been persistent, and my reading speed is still labored when I'm reading out loud, and my spelling is still something that is really challenging for me on a daily basis. So we would label me in the research world, and probably professionally in my clinical experience, as as being more profoundly dyslexic, if you wanted. And I can use that because I'm part of the community. So I'm part of what I consider a community of individuals with differences. Some people broaden that to be neurodivergent. Professionally, I am trained in the cognitive sciences, so I didn't stop going to school until my mother said I had to stop, and that was after doing a post doctoral fellowship. My training initially was in cognitive development. I focused on memory and memory acquisition across the lifespan and children, kind of four and five was the earliest I've ever published research on and then kind into the aging memory is the the later years that I've looked at with our aging populations. Most of it's been done kind of theory building in kind of young adult populations. But it was those young kids up to to aging memory. I really always wanted to do applied research. So I had basic theory building and methodology building as my my background, in trade, my craft, and then I tried to apply it. It was eyewitness memory for me in particular, and forensic interviewing techniques to preserve eyewitness accounts of what happened to them. And I've done memory on that and looking how we can preserve our memory. That's what I did for my graduate training theory building and memory, as well as kind of the implication of that theory and those theoretical perspectives onto eyewitness memory. In my post doctoral fellowship, I was fortunate enough to be able to cross train in two critical areas for me, neuroimaging, which I did at UT Southwestern, where I'd later be on the faculty, and also in dyslexia, understanding it from a research standpoint. And I was fortunate enough to get to work with Reed Lyon, because he had moved to Dallas from Bethesda, Maryland, and NIH at the time. So I got to work under his mentorship to help introduce me into some aspects of that research, to have some mentorship there, and then also the clinical side of it. So I got to be trained for two years as a dyslexia intervention. Is that Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children in the Luke waits center for dyslexia. I was fortunate, because it was the last time Luke waits would actually lecture the teachers in training. So I can say that one of my mentors was Dr Lucius Waites, Karen Avery, the lead author of take flight, was my qualified instructor who did my training, along with many other fabulous people who helped to get me grounded in what it takes. Thanks. My training was in one of learning how to use an empirically validated structural literacy intervention, as well as having to show practical, supervised hours implementing it with feedback and showing, in a kind of a clinical model, how I could take feedback improve and be really qualified to go out into the world and work with them. So yes, I have taught children with dyslexia, or those who struggle to read and spell how to read and spell words, and I've done so in my center right now, we have people who are being trained and take flight as well and getting supervision in both of those. My training at the hospital was a little unique because of when I came in, I got more of a holistic training. So I also went through and understood how they were outreaching to schools and what they were doing in the work in Texas. So I got kind of some insider understanding of that. I also got trained in their diagnostic models and got to work with the lead clinical psychologist, and at that time, his team of diagnosticians, and really they're in a disciplinary approach to looking at dyslexia, which involved the pediatricians, the educators on staff, the clinical psychologists on staff, the school psychologists on task. It was an interdisciplinary team that came together. So those of you that are aware of kind of language differences and identification, Dorothy bishop in particular, has identified in past writings that this is really kind of if you're going to do it in a clinical setting. Clinical setting, one of the really good ways to do it. So that's kind of where I came from, from a professional and training background, and I continue to do research in the world of I've really transitioned away from memory. I have a few lingering data sets and manuscripts that are out there to be published, especially in the child memory area that we're still waiting to get the final word on and get published, but mainly I work now in literacy, dyslexia, identification rates, screening practices, treatment resistors, who were really hard to teach, and how we can predict and pro and Understand where they might wind up and what factors we can use to differentiate and better meet their needs. So it was kind of a long winded way to answer your question there. So practically, experience of being a dyslexic, now a parent of a child with dyslexia, and then clinical experience actually teaching children with dyslexia, and then work that I've done in research, I've also done a lot of outreach to state departments of Ed over the last 10 years, a lot of work in schools with implementation models and implementation science, trying to understand how it works on the on the ground and still and I'll be out in schools in a few weeks, going out and looking and giving feedback on their implementations and working strategically with their teams about how we can improve what they're doing to better meet the needs of their kids. I

Donell Pons:

love that, Tim and that no that extensive background, you are unpacking a lifetime of really solid work, so I appreciated you giving us that information. I want to kind of linger a bit with you. And you know you have dyslexia. A lot of our listeners are always very interested in, when did you know? Did you know when you were young? Did you get the kind of help that you needed? What did that look like?

Tim Odegard:

That is a great question. So I think there's two parts to that question. When did I know that I had something that the society and the social construct of dyslexia, versus when did I know that I couldn't read and spell very well? I knew that I couldn't read and spell very well, starting in the second but definitely in the third grade. I knew that I'd been pulled out for testing. I knew that I was having to go and be stuck on a computer. I didn't have anybody explain to me what this meant to me. I would later find out from my mother that I was never given the label of dyslexia. I was never given any kind of label of a reading disabled child, and they were just kind of not knowing what to do with me. I didn't fit their classification model, meaning I didn't fit their policy and how they implemented policy in the 80s, for how you would identify us, policy that still is allowed under federal law through IDEA, my IQ score test wasn't high enough to be considered a person with a reading disability based off of an IQ discrepancy identification model. So I have many parents and many people come up to me and say that I'm kind of the poster child for the exceptional, twice exceptional, form of dyslexia, after they hear me speak and they find I have it. I wasn't considered that based off of testing, only through what I have demonstrated I am capable of by force, fighting for the right to do that for myself. I didn't receive any protections. I got no accommodations. I got no services. I was deemed a stupid child that wasn't worthy of any protections or services. I wasn't low enough on the IQ to be intellectually disabled, but I wasn't high enough on the IQ to be in the average range, and definitely not high enough to fit a discrepancy model to be identified with dyslexia. Yeah, so that's just the brutal reality that I lived, and really has been the the place where I fortified this idea of building empathy and compassion, opposed to bitterness, hatred and disdain. You can see how I could be completely something, completely different than what I am now, not the one of the biggest advocates for teachers and educators in the country right now. I'm not someone who always says we must remember that it's hard to be in the classroom. I could be a person who's bitter, saying that they hurt me, they harmed me, but it was only a few that did that, and I feel that it was the systems they were in and what they thought they had to do that were the harmful factors and not the humans who were my teachers at the time. So that's that's when I knew that I couldn't read and spell. I started to learn that there was this thing that fit my profile, kind of in junior high, definitely, and then in high school that we call dyslexia. I remember my high school AP English teacher having me try to tap out syllables and words after class one day, and I couldn't do it. Couldn't hear the syllables and words, which we would now identify through. Well, with the time Keith shanavich had already been building off the work out of Haskins laboratory to propose the phonological hypothesis deficit of dyslexia. So don't know where this AP English teacher kind of got that crazy idea, but she thought that it might be important to take this really bright kid who seems to be able to understand and communicate very well about this complex literature that we're reading, but yet can't seem to craft syntactically sound sentences. Can't seem to spell his way out of a paper bag. And then she found out couldn't tap out syllables on a desk in high school.

Donell Pons:

And how did, how did you get to college? How did you have the wherewithal to say, I'm going to do college?

Tim Odegard:

Well, so I said that I forged empathy and compassion in the long run. I had a massive chip on my shoulder so I knew that I was treated less than and other than and I also thought that I had the potential to be far more than what anybody around me thought that I could and just as it was teachers who lied to my face when I was in elementary school on multiple occasions about my potential and capability, it was also teachers who identified and marked me as having something worth investing in. And it was actually a junior high teacher that made me, on the last day of school before I went to high school, take because he had recommended me to be in an advanced history class because I had done so well in his history class, to take the form to the principal's office. He walked me there and had me turn it in. I think what we we forget about in our dyslexia community and maybe allies and parents and advocates out there is is that feeling different can be something that you just don't want to be singled out for. So I had been made filled different because I was made to feel stupid, told that I was stupid to my face by teachers, and definitely told that I was stupid by classmates to my face. So the idea that I would be exceptional in a good way, it made and singled out to have to leave kind of the tribe that I had formed of, kind of the jolly band of misfits, the skater kids, the the the other kids that I identified with who were all kind of counter cultural at the time in this small school that I was in, I didn't want to be other than and being with the bright kids either, you know, because they're singled out. They're not able to just blend into the wall, so, but he did, he he really encouraged me, and then I wound up doing well in that. I wound up getting into AP English for my junior and senior year, but I would stay up until one o'clock in the morning every night to do my work, and then I was in the marching band. So I was up at 536 o'clock in the morning to get to marching band practice. I was also in the jazz band in the spring semester, so I was up early to get to jazz band practice, which were all before school activities. I was also in drama my senior year, so I stayed after for play rehearsals. And I worked a part time job. It was on blue collar and so I worked my way through high school to pay for things like medical appointments that I had to have, pay for the gas in my truck, pay for the insurance, that type of stuff. So I just learned to really work hard, as many of us with learning differences have to learn to do if we're going to get ahead in life, even if we did get accommodations, even if we did get intervention, we still work harder than other kids. Yeah,

Donell Pons:

okay, Tim, you have got to help me here to see because I'm assuming you go off to college. Did you get any accommodations in college? No,

Tim Odegard:

yeah, no, I would have taken at that time I didn't have an IEP in high school, right? Was denied any kind of thing. Also, once I was able to mainstream and be considered and to pass for normal, because of all the extra work I was doing, I never wanted to be seen as other than so I wouldn't have so that kind of ether, that kind of meant. Stuck with me. And when I went to college, I didn't want to, and I never thought about it. There was one instance that I did think about, you know, it would be nice to have accommodations that one of my professors in my I'm a psychology major. I'm a double major, religion psychology. It was, what was it? Was it was abnormal psychology. And this professor would count off her spelling on tests. Now, serotonin, five HP, that was fine. Norepinephrine, you can use the abbreviations for the neurotransmitters for the psychopharmacological side of things. So that was great. So I would just use those. I would memorize those dopamine da, don't have to even spell those, right? Awesome, but try to fill mania, I had to spell so I didn't have to spell norepinephrine, I didn't spell dopamine, didn't have to spell acetylcholine, but I'd have to spell other things. And a lot of those will have Latin forms in them, right, which are going to be long, chunky words. So I didn't make A's on off my test because of spelling errors, which I didn't think was quite fair. But he said, you know, and I asked him about it. Say, Hey, well, so you know, this has been something I've had for my entire life. We call this dyslexia. He's like, Yeah. And if you go to a clinical psychologist and get tested and go to the testing center and prove proof of it, then I'll give you an accommodation for it. You know, at that time, I think I may have already been accepted to graduate school, probably already had my assistantship in the bag. I had two different graduate schools that wanted me. Both were offering me assistantships. I was I didn't need it, but it was just another example of how the world can be so set up for us and that the barriers to entry could require me to have to go and spend$2,500 to have a clinical psychologist do testing that may or may not come to show that I was really hard to teach how to read spell right. But obviously at that point, I wasn't in a position where that was mission critical for me. But it was kind of interesting that the that a professor would think that it was meritorious to deny somebody A's on test for the fear of fact that they couldn't spell some of the words right, and that was the only thing that the child that the student got wrong. Now I did manage to pull an A in the class because of written assignments, which I could then go and do spell check and then double check ferociously to make sure that I didn't put any misspellings in there. Yeah.

Donell Pons:

Oh, Tim, your story's resonating with me in so many levels. I work with adults. I'm one of the few. There's a few of us out there that do find a space to be able to work with adults, and I work with adults in the workplace, and all of them are phenomenal and fabulous, and I I'm a pleasure to know all of them, but all of them carry with them, to some extent, a story where things fell apart for them and where their so called dreams and hopes were dashed. And there's no other way to put it. And some of them are, you know, in their 40s, and feel like if I they can just get a foothold, maybe they can go back and try for some of these things. But there's always that hope that maybe there's maybe I can steal, maybe still something might happen. And they can name almost the day when they felt like their dreams are dashed, and they knew that there's no way I can do this. It's just too hard. The hurdle is too high. And so I find it interesting. I always find it interesting. People are able to find a way to get over that hurdle, to get to the next one, to be able to do something. But it's always, I think you have stated very clearly, it's always on the individual to find a way to make the system work for them. It's not the system needs to work for them. It's really interesting.

Tim Odegard:

I do think that. I think that's this hard thing, and I think it's easier, probably for some of us in society, given how society defaultly treats us, to take that burden on ourselves. And so I do think there's a place for allies and advocates and others to try to find supports that can be options for them and for us in the position to choose for ourselves. And sometimes, I think it's going to take some nudging and encouragement, but at the end of the day, everybody has to choose for themselves how they move forward with their own path. But I do think there is a role for people to support us in certain ways and to make sure that there are systems in place that can, I mean, I mean that that professor said, what I could do? I could go spend$2,500 get with a clinical psychologist to get the testing done, and then bring that back. There was a path presented to me. And if I'd come in at the beginning of college and done that, I could have had accommodations the whole way through college, if I had done that, I wasn't aware of that. And so that's part of like by default. Some people. I'm a first gen college student. My parents didn't go to college. They didn't know how to work the system. Because my mom was dealing with the most problematic child in the house as far as her learning needs, and that was my sister, not me. So we all do the best we can, I think. But yes, it is on us as an individual. It's unfortunate. It is, and it's easier for some people than others to do it, if you've got allies in your house that know how to use the systems in place and had the resources to pay to use them and to get the support you need. It can work swimmingly well for you if you are in a position of a marginalized community, or if you have the lack of resources, not the resource of love or desire of your parents to want you to be able to achieve whatever you want, but the know how to make that system work. And I think any first generation college student knows how different the experience is for you than it will be, hopefully for your children. And it's something my child said to me. My son said, I don't know. You might have been in sixth grade. He might have been seventh grade. He just looked at me, we're on one of our road trips. He said, you know, Dad, I'm so glad I have you. I said, why? I said, because you know what it's like to have dyslexia, and you've already done it, and so you can help me navigate how to do this for myself. And we think we forget that, and I think that those peer to peer networks out there, like eye to eye and other ways for us to engage and to support one another, and even just getting on and sharing your story like Amir Baraka did on Twitter in the past, just I say a huge shout out to him, because being vulnerable in that space to just share that reached some little boy that could see himself in a mirror, or some little girl that could see themselves in a mirror story, and they could say, if He could do what I could do it. What did he do? And maybe I could find others like us that I could learn from, and I could find out if what they did will work for me.

Reading Horizons:

If you're wondering where to find proven outcome focused ways to put the science of reading into practice, you're in the right place. Reading Horizons, Discovery product suite is a foundational literacy program for grades K through three that leverages a versatile instruction method, a personalized student platform and accessible learning aids that include phoneme cards, student transfer books and decodable books. The program streamlines literacy instruction and empowers teachers so all learners can achieve reading proficiency, go to Reading horizons.com/discovery, To Learn more and download the complete program details today.

Donell Pons:

Tim, you're so right about the empowerment that comes from hearing other people's stories. It really is. It's powerful. I don't think we understand that or give it enough credit, and I think it's really insightful of your son to be able to say those things. And it's interesting because I've had a similar conversation with my son, who has dyslexia, and now he's received a lot of help, a lot of support, and when he reads, it's beautiful to listen to. That took a lot of work his on his part and my part, but it's really interesting. He said to me, it wasn't too long ago, Mom, why are you still doing this work? I you know you've done it, yay. I'm a good reader. I I'm solid. I feel good. Why are you still doing the work? And I said, because your children may have dyslexia, and there may be other people whose children may have dyslexia. And my son goes, Ah, that's right. So we'll keep up the fight. Tim, tell me because you have done a lot of work within your own state too, to help with legislation, because that's a big thing right now. It's a hot spot where a lot of states are now realizing reading needs to be taught more vigorously. We need to have some some real language around how we do this. Teach reading because our scores are so low. There are students who have dyslexia, but there are also other students who just with like you said, better instruction could have done better in reading and spelling. So tell me a little bit about that work that you're doing, because I've been watching that as well, the definitions in your state and kind of that work that's been going on behind the scenes.

Tim Odegard:

Yeah, and I always like to clarify with the legislative piece, the legislation did not come about because of anything that I did per se, sometimes I would be pulled in early, more recently, now in certain state legislative initiatives to give my input into, and then that might shape. But really what I did in Tennessee was parent advocates had worked collaboratively with other groups to bring forth a couple different pieces of legislation, and then they created a context. And what I really wanted to focus on was making it an enabling context, as we've learned from implementation science, the role that policy can have is to make an enabling context. So my center, the Tennessee center for dyslexia, has been trying to do is create easy to access, easy to understand, ways of translating and thinking about how you would take that policy and you would place it into your school systems and procedures, even something as simple as saying, what does it mean to say that we're going to screen for dyslexia? Well, that means that if we're pre K, or if we're in K, we're really screening for risk for dyslexia, because we characterize dyslexia and all. States now with our definitions as a primary characteristic of word reading and word spelling, so we couldn't even identify you as having those deficits until you're developmentally expected to be able to do that by either developmental expectations for reading development, literacy development and or state standards, all state standards that I know have expectations that we're reading and spelling simple words by first grade, which means that we can actually screen for the primary characteristics of dyslexia. But the idea that we could use the term of characteristics of dyslexia to help us to make sure that even in kind of an TSS waiting for the data points to become eligible for testing, to then be identified and qualify for eligibility for special education, if you're like in a state like Texas that now requires by state law that you have to receive anything for dyslexia through a special education, trying to say, well, what if it's not severe enough, what if it's not impacting your life? What if it's not impacting your academics, but you're still not able to do these life skills that are needed that are probably going to set you up for future literacy, success and future grades. How are we going to use and leverage the tiers of support? How are we going to conceptualize that? So I think of what I do is kind of the translator and then working to come up with documents and ways of contextualizing policy that allows it to be implemented more effectively in the classroom, and I can see that some of the stuff that we've done is has seemingly caught on, because you'll see things happen. I did not choose the word characteristics of dyslexia. It was put forward in that legislation, but we thought about it at my center. I thought about it with other thought partners. What is the meaning of this? How could it be leveraged in a powerful way. How could it be used to benefit my community? Well, I knew what it was like to sit there and not have my spelling and reading problems identified because I didn't fit an eligibility criteria under IDEA, under the legacy of Samuel Kirk and others and their exceptionality model and operationalizing that as a discrepancy with IQ? Well, I didn't want that to be a barrier. Really is finding our characteristics, our needs for a literacy profile. And what my research and other people's research has shown is is that we sometimes aren't doing in practice in schools and matching their needs to literacy profile. And so if we could even just say dyslexia is a well characterized profile with these very specific word level deficits that can cause problems elsewhere, even if we don't qualify. You need to be giving a structured literacy. You need to be using instructional intensifiers. You need to give us the dosage that will meet our need. As we've seen from researchers like Joe torgeson and others, that it takes a lot of dosage, and that when we're non responsive, it's not that we're not learning is that we're going to have to have a protracted, prolonged, higher level of dosage that might last a little bit longer than what you would think for a tier two, that you have to set it up for that. And then also to try to raise awareness that we don't need to start thinking that by changing a program, we're changing things instructionally. Because we see, I've seen in the Tennessee implementations and elsewhere, that we think that what we're supposed to do is, oh, we put them in SPIRE for a year. It didn't seem to be working. We put them in Wilson for a year. It didn't seem to be working. Well, what is your outcome measure? Are they learning? What you're teaching them is what you're teaching them, the skills that they didn't have. What so different isn't different by putting them in a different type of structured literacy intervention, but then always taking them back to the beginning. I mean, there was, there was a the child here that spoke on his own behalf. It was his Eagle Scout project. He had me come in for a dyslexia awareness event at his local library, and he got up there and gave his own lip narrative. And it was, they put me in SPIRE, and they said it didn't work. They put me in Wilson, and they said it didn't work. But all I kept telling them, you're teaching me the same stuff. And when I looked at what he had received, he was always being taught CBC words and single syllables. They never actually taught him anything beyond the initial parts of these things, because the measure they were using wasn't aligned to the curriculum and to some kind of an outcome like oral reading fluency or comprehension. So they weren't realizing he was responding, but they weren't going through the scope of the language he needed to be able to do grade level stuff. Their basic idea as educators about what they were supposed to be doing, in the spirit of MTSS was so far afield because they were too worried about compliance and not getting in trouble.

Donell Pons:

Oh, Tim Boy, you've hit on something there, right there. And a lot of states, mine included, have put a lot of effort into legislation that dictates some of these things, and they say teachers need to be educated in a certain way about the science of reading. Let's put it that way. But then the teachers get back to the classroom and they say, but I don't know what to teach today, so I went out and received this information about the science of reading. That was all good and great, and it was nice. But now. I'm back in my classroom, I'm not quite sure what to teach. That's what we're up against.

Tim Odegard:

It is we don't so that is a great insight, and it's an insight that educators say we have to thread the needle and find the balance between we should bring Tim Odegard in and have him do his overview of dyslexia presentation, or his science of reading presentation. Yes, you should, I there's a place for someone like me to come in at the high level and set the stage, build a conceptual framework to help ground what you're going to think about, to come in and really engage you, give you some good knowledge to build off of. There's also a need to have people like me that can also do this, but other people to come in and say, what does this look like? How does it look like in your classroom? Let's put it into practice. There's a need to adopt really good quality, comprehensive, core reading instructions that have been empirically validated, meaning that research says they work and they work with kids like in your context, and also to supplement those with really quality, structured literacy interventions or intervention that can be pitted to the right profile of need. And you have to be trained in how to use those. You have to be supervised and held accountable for doing it properly. Our medical doctors aren't given a scalpel and said, use it however you please when you go in there and try to do this. I just got some work done, and there was a doctor using medical imaging to guide what he did in my cervical spine. I don't want him not trained on how to do that in the way that will produce high high outcomes, good outcomes, and not harm me. So we have to think about how we're instructing. But educators need to know what to do in the classroom, and they want to know that. So if we just have it be about online training and compliance, and let's say, Okay, we're going to bring Tim Odegard in because we have this new requirement that we've learned about dyslexia, that's kind of missing the point. Yeah, have me come in, yes, but let's prioritize the resources of talent and time the teacher time in particular, to show them how to do that in the classroom. Yeah,

Donell Pons:

oh, Tim, this is so valuable. And I hope there are people listening, and I'm going to share this if they didn't have time to catch it to listen, because this is a critical point, I think, and I think it's a pain point that a lot of states are feeling right now, saying, hey, things aren't looking we thought they would with data, and they haven't really been paying attention to the information teachers have been giving them about this very thing we've just discussed. That was a high level Thank you very much. It gave me a lot of information. But what does that really mean in my classroom Monday, when I'm still working with the same students. I This is phenomenal, very good information. And it takes Tim a lot of background and training that one training isn't going to do it, and it takes, like you said, feedback and someone coming in to see what's happening and telling me, and being able to talk about it in groups and singly. Boy, this is good information. So Tim, tell me some of the highlights or high points that you see happening even in your own state or other states where they're getting it right. What are some of the things that they're doing to get it right?

Tim Odegard:

Well, I think I Well, we've got some examples of getting it right. I think we can learn from Mississippi that stay in the course, investing in developing talent, believing in teachers, investing in teachers, I think, is getting it right. The work that Mississippi has done has been over a decade, and they stayed the course, and they're reaping the benefits. I mean, the majority of the kids in that state were able to pass the third grade reading test on the first attempt. That's an exceptional mark, given the bleak reality of those types of outcomes, even in Tennessee, where the majority of kids failed it and had to go to summer school. That took a sustained effort with developing your talent and believing in your teachers. They're the ones that signed up and held their hands up, they're the ones that have the heart to get in the classrooms. So I think that we can learn by that believing in and investing in our teachers, and that was done by systematic use of very high level training. But it wasn't just that knowledge piece. So yes, they brought in letters as their core piece that they did, I think they're now working with aims pathway, so shout out to the aim Institute. But they also invested in teams of highly qualified coaches going out into the classrooms to build up a capacity, to have coaches who knew what it takes and had actually done the work in the classroom to provide supervision and feedback and guidance on elevating up their practice and taking that and not stopping at job. Us, we're going to build up your knowledge. It takes knowledge and practice. So I think we can learn that as well from that. I think one of the lessons from Tennessee that we can get, I think that the the legislation here was really thoughtful about the high quality instructional materials. I think that if we can, if we can get and make sure that we start with giving the teachers the tools that then mirrors in and builds off of the work that we learned from Mississippi, then we show them how to use the tools. I would say that the work that Arkansas did and their right to read legislation by warehousing the K through two universal screening data that they mandated to use to understand how they could support schools, not just punish schools. You start to put those things together right data from kids in the stakeholders hands who have the resources to fledge into the schools through service centers, through educational cooperatives, through large district support services work collaboratively to bring in knowledge, to do the instructional coaching in and to have high quality instructional materials that you're instructing them and showing them how to use, I think is critical now, if you bring in The higher education piece, and we start to model in and we start to build partnerships now, where we start to train people to be job ready day one, if you're going to be an elementary education teacher on the high quality instructional materials, and if you happen to be in a state like Tennessee, where the state has provided you with those materials as an option to adopt. Why would we not have state funded universities like mind training through our literacy classes how to use those on day one? They may not be what's adopted, but why not get practical? Why not be showing them what high quality instructional materials can look like and how to implement them. It's not to say that the state materials that Tennessee has are the best and the brightest and the only one out there, but let's just start to model. Let's get concrete and practical, but also let's elevate up what we have. So I think those are some examples, but I think it's a it's a constellation of drivers that have to come to allow us to have an ecosystem that supports literacy for all.

Donell Pons:

Yeah, Tim, gosh, you've said some really important things, not the least of which is the time that it takes. I think a lot. There's a lot of impatience. If something doesn't work in year one, then we start questioning if something by year two doesn't give us the data we want. We start questioning and that sense of, Well, we're going to give you this little bit of time clock is ticking. I love you saying, hey, look, it takes much longer than that. And as you've laid out very well, talking about the type of knowledge that we need and people being able to gain that understanding that does take time. I love also hearing you talk about, let's branch into the higher education, let's have those teachers more prepared day one, so that those kids who get the new teacher aren't those poor kids that they're learning on. Rather, it's a teacher who's prepared to be in that classroom. And the impact that has. She said so many wonderful, phenomenal things. Thank you, Tim for that. I can tell you've been at this a while, right? A little bit, just a little bit.

Tim Odegard:

I started when I was 12. According to Louisa boats, I did start running my County's library summer reading program when I was 14. So I've been at this in a while.

Donell Pons:

Tim, you represent your community so well, and you've talked about the fact that you were generation one going to college, but clearly there, Tim, it comes out in so many ways that you've had good storytelling, you've had an excellent understanding of the world around you, and I'm sure that came from the folks who are your people in your world. And tell me a little bit about that growing up, uh,

Tim Odegard:

well, my background is blue collar and from a rural background, so yeah, and we, we spent a lot of time enjoying nature and getting out into those as I've said recently. You know, I wouldn't be my grandmother's grandchild if I couldn't go out look at the sky and tell you what the weather had in store, or that I couldn't look up at the trees and and tell you what I was seeing around me and knowing what was around so it was really that kind of focus for me first and foremost. So that really is kind of my background, and really, you know, learning and being curious about what you have. My grandmother had to pay her own way and how to leave a small community on the White River in Arkansas to go to Kansas City and live in a boarding house to go and get to middle school. So it mean, I wouldn't say that education wasn't important to my family. So it's just as I highlighted, certain members of our society take for granted what doors are automatically opened for you. And so living in a rural community in the hills of Arkansas on the White River meant that your one school, one room schoolhouse, it was also your church stopped at a certain point. So if you wanted to go on in schooling, just a middle school, you might have to leave your community and go somewhere else and live in a boarding house and put yourself through school. And that's what she did. She didn't go into high school. She went back to Arkansas and she did what she did. She would meet my grandfather. My grandfather was an orphan in North Dakota, and his escape was to be a military veteran. He served our nation in World War Two. He was part of the Berlin Airlift. He ran and trained all of the people who took care of our Strategic Air Command and the B 50 twos, and he trained them how to take care of those electrical systems and keep them operational in the air. He rewrote the math curriculum, and his service commendation was for having elevated the math knowledge of all of our enlistees who came in to take care of our Strategic Air Command because they were being failed by public education in our nation. So I won't say that my family didn't value education. I think that some of us have to realize that what we do in life and choose to deal with our lives may not be higher ed, but we still make a contribution. As I think my family has

Donell Pons:

absolutely Tim that just kind of resonated with me a great deal. My father was an unidentified dyslexic, and it was only very late in life that I realized that my father had been compensating a lot in order to do what he did in his life. But he was first generation for us, going to college in his family, and his father was a minor who died of black lung when my father was very young, and in order to keep their home, they were living in a mining community. My father was a janitor, and he would get up early in middle school, and he would go over and clean the locker room in order for his mother to stay in her home. And he had one sibling, a brother, and it was my father's job to help provide at that point, it was 14 years old when that occurred, and so his life was very difficult. It was a lot of graft, a lot of hard graft. He also served in World War Two, and I think that's when he found a passion for something, because it was electrical wiring that he could understand. That was that seemed to be the thing that he was able to get the reading and writing were difficult, and so he clung to that. And then when he got out of the army, the military did his service. He found his way to a university, and again, was a janitor. And so he would work as a janitor at night to put himself through school. And he found that he could work with numbers as long as they were in columns. And so it was accounting that he kind of fell into, but he taught me a great deal about and it was very similar to yourself, Tim, that you can always learn and to be learning of the world around you. My father would always ask me, you know, really good pointed questions about, what did you see today? What did you learn today? Whenever I wanted to hang out with him to help him with something, he would always say to me, so what is it you're going to contribute? What are you bringing for this experience that we're having? And I was really young to be asked that question. And so you also, what I think we learn in this reading and writing thing that we're doing is that we learn about people, and we learn about how people learn, and we also learn about what they bring and what they can be contributing. And you see the whole person. I think when you have a real understanding of the difficulties of reading and writing, it brings you to understand the whole person and their experience, I think. And Tim, the way that you have given a heart and soul to this discussion, I really appreciate, I think that's one of the things that really draws me to you when you have a presentation at a conference is you bring a lot of heart and soul to this work that we do. And it's not just numbers and data which are important, but you also give them life, and I think that's really important for the rest of us, so I really appreciate that, and I've enjoyed this conversation this morning. Thank you.

Tim Odegard:

Thank you so much. I can't think of any other way to translate it is to make it real for the people and the people listening and others. It doesn't mean in the journals in my research that I'm going to sensationalize it or talk about it that way. I but I do think that we have to remember that this is humanity. And if we were to say with Arcane models of medical science, then we wouldn't have dosages right for women, and you wouldn't have the right dosage, because it would have been based off of thinking, Oh, we should be color and and gender and sex blind in our medical sciences, we wouldn't have pediatric doses. So sometimes I've answered hard questions about the realities of certain conceptual frameworks and theories to say, do they apply for everybody in society and they don't? And but if I had said that all the dosages were right for cancer treatment and for everybody in our society, we'd be poisoning people beyond what we should be to make them healthy by getting rid of the cancer. So I don't think that we can forget the humanity even in the sciences, and I worry about it if we ever have people think that objectivism should go so far to say that individual differences and differences that might exist that we could document, such as dosages for medical treatment, would be something that would be off limits to us. So I think reminding ourselves of our humanity and how we're all unique and individual, as my mentor Reid Lyon always say, You know what works, how, for whom, and if we're not answering those basic questions, then we're not doing our jobs as scientists. So thank you for allowing me to acknowledge the humanity in the work that all of us are doing. Yeah,

Donell Pons:

yeah. Tim, is there anything that you'd like to cover that we didn't cover?

Tim Odegard:

I think we covered a lot there. So I think, yeah,

Donell Pons:

I think we had a great conversation. I really appreciate, again, your willingness to do this and to be so open and candid with us. I really appreciate it.

Tim Odegard:

Thank you, Donnell. I appreciate it too.

Donell Pons:

Yeah, you bet. So we will have a another podcast coming up as well. But this has been fantastic. Thank you so much. Tim, thank you.

Narrator:

Thanks for joining us today. Literacy Talks comes to you from Reading Horizons, where reading momentum begins. Visit readinghorizons.com/literacytalks to access episodes and resources to support your journey in the science of reading.