Episode Transcript

Announcer: This podcast is produced by Benchmark Education.

Kevin Carlson: Strong home-school connections create a school culture where the partnership between educators and families is valued and important.

So how do you foster them? In this episode: Home-school Connections: Creating Pathways for Student Success.

I'm Kevin Carlson and this is Teachers Talk Shop.

Amy Fleisher: Parents, regardless of their socioeconomic situation or background, want their child to be successful in school.

Kevin Carlson: That is Amy Fleisher, M.I.T., a primary-grade reading interventionist working in the Seattle Public Schools.

Julie Bedell: It's really nice to kind of get the parents’ side of things, and it helps your teaching of that child. And it helps you move that child forward, not just academically, but maybe emotionally.

Kevin Carlson: And that is Julie Bedell, M.S., who is in the 36th year of her public-school teaching career as both a reading specialist and a K-8 classroom teacher. Amy and Julie are educators in Washington State, founders of Read Washington, and coauthors of a chapter in the book, Climbing the Ladder of Reading and Writing.

Benchmark Education's doctor, Jennifer Night, sat down with Amy and Julie recently to discuss how teachers can foster meaningful home-school connections and create a welcoming school culture that values the partnership between educators and families.

Here is Jen Nigh with Amy Fleisher and Julie Bedell.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Well, welcome, Julie and Amy. I am so excited to be talking with you today on this episode with a very important topic, which is home and school connections. So welcome to you both. I know it's been a long school day, probably a long week. So thrilled to have you here at the end of your day to chat with us.

So let's go ahead and get started into this conversation. Amy and Julie, can you both introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about yourselves?

Amy, why don't we start with you?

Amy Fleisher: My name is Amy Fleisher, and I am a reading intervention teacher in Seattle, Washington and have been in this position for 6 or 7 years and have had the pleasure of working with Julie for that entire time. I've actually known her for a lot longer than that, in that she was my oldest son, who's now graduating from college, his second-grade teacher, and she was my first sort of eye-opening moment into the Science of Reading and all of the power it holds.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Wonderful. How fun that you both get to work together and you have such a long relationship. That's fabulous.

Amy Fleisher: It is.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Makes those difficult days a little bit easier, I'm sure.

Amy Fleisher: Yeah, absolutely. I would consider her a friend and a mentor and just all of those things wrapped up into one. I still go to her on a daily basis for, “Okay, now what do I do?”

Julie Bedell: Oh, Amy pretty much can stand on her own. It's always good to have a friend, and somebody you can bounce ideas off of. But rightly so, she has learned very quickly how to teach reading and how to teach reading well, to kids who maybe struggle a little bit.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Yeah, that's great. Well, what great testimonies for each of you. And, Julie, I think Amy just gave you a wonderful segue into your question, I love that.

Julie Bedell: So my name is Julie Bedell and I just was out on a dog walk with my dog, so hopefully he won't bark. And I figured out this is my 39th year of teaching. So…

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Congratulations. That's incredible.

Julie Bedell: Yes, and I've landed the last dozen years or so in second grade, which I love. I always say it's the grade level love of my life, kind of. But I have been in sixth grade and seventh grade and eighth grade, our reading specialist. I mean, I've done a lot of, had a lot of teaching experiences.

So what about me? I spent about 14 years as a specialist, and I decided I wanted to wear the shoes of the regular teacher again and get a feel for what it was like to have all different grade levels, or all different ability levels, in your room, and maybe teach something more than just reading. So that's why I went back to the regular classroom.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: And I know reading and literacy in general is a huge passion for you both because you are the founders, or started an organization. Tell us a little bit about that.

Julie Bedell: Do you want to take it away?

Amy Fleisher: Yeah. So Julie and I, it was sort of a life-changing thing for us both. I think we attended a Plain Talk conference several years ago and on the way back from that, we were at the New Orleans airport with Dr. Jan Hasbrouck and we're just sort of talking about how there's just so much to learn and to know, and when you're in the classroom thinking about who can't find their lunchbox and what is that—or, “Where are my permission slips?” and, “What new training do I need to go to?” But to be able to pull in some of the incredible knowledge that is out there from researchers about the Science of Reading and Writing and how students learn is just sort of an overwhelming task when you're living the daily life of a classroom teacher.

So we just felt like, well, what if we put our different experiences, because we're all coming from a little bit different perspective and experience with education and teaching and our own children—that let's start this and see what we can do. And I think that was in 2019.

Julie Bedell: Yes. It was before the pandemic.

Amy Fleisher: So this June will be five years from our very first, uh, webinar—it wasn't a webinar, actually, it was an in-person…

Julie Bedell: Event.

Amy Fleisher: The Science of Reading with Jan and co-sponsored by the Reading League. And that was really exciting. And then it just has sort of taken off from there.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Wonderful. And what's the name of your organization?

Julie Bedell: Read Washington. And we really want to help every educator learn how to teach reading so no child is left behind or failing.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Yeah. What a great mission.

Julie Bedell: We're really passionate about that.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: I can tell, absolutely. And that passion extends into another collaborative project that you both undertook, with Dr. Jan Hasbrouck and Dr. Nancy Young, in their edited book, Climbing the Ladder of Reading and Writing . So you both co-authored a chapter on our topic today, which is, of course, that home and school connection. So tell me a little bit about what—I know you're passionate about literacy, you both come with tremendous amounts of expertise and experience in education. But what really draws you to that topic enough so that you wrote a chapter about it in this book? Tell me a little bit more about that.

Julie Bedell: Well, first, we were very honored to be asked to do it, I'll tell you that much. And second, we did pore through the research on it. And then third, we're both moms, we both had kids in school, we both hit bumps, different kinds of bumps. And we both knew that when you worked with the school and with your child's teacher that things can be solved. There's a way to do this. So everyone wins.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Sure. Yeah, I like something you just said about—you're both moms, you both have hit bumps in the road and being able to kind of tie that experience into what research says, between that connection, between home and school, I think is really powerful. That probably really kind of builds bridges then, too, from what you're doing in the classroom to how that translates to your kids’ parents and families and what they're doing at home and then back again. So that's really great to hear. What does research say that supports this connection between home and schools? What works?

Amy Fleisher: Well, one of the things that we read about was that the importance of schools—which this sounds sort of obvious, but I think it's harder to make happen than just saying it—for schools to really provide, to be welcoming and to kind of establish pathways for that connection, that it's not just going to happen in and of itself. Schools and districts and teachers need to create avenues for parents and families to come into the school. And that might actually take some planning, some funding, some training for teachers or for administrators to figure out, “Okay, what are some effective ways to do this”—research has shown, there's a lot of research about some families, their resistance to becoming involved is because of their own traumatic experience with school and that then, before you've even had that first day, there's already something there that's going to be something that, as a teacher, you have to really kind of work to overcome and to build some trust and work around that.

We were surprised reading the research, and that, wow, this has actually been studied and there are things that people have learned about—you can get a lot more bang for your buck if you give parents very specific ways that they can help at home and provide them—there are programs that provide them training. And I'm not saying that's what we've done, but there are things that have been looked into that have evidence behind them as being successful.

Julie Bedell: I think Amy hit it spot on in saying that you have to plan for it from the school end. You have to make some pathways so parents feel really welcome. And then there's the other side, where sometimes it can feel intimidating to a teacher to have a parent who might be mad, who might be inquiring about something that they've read about all over the internet, and maybe the teacher doesn't know a lot about, perhaps, dyslexia dysgraphia yet, and they're using these big words. So it's really important to keep those communication lines open. It really helps the kids if you all can get along. Make a plan to move forward and work together and be very open, as open as you can be.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Yeah, well, and I imagine that leadership, whether it's principal, whether it's district administration, plays a significant role in as much wonderful things that can happen in one classroom when you can create a culture of those expectations you were talking about—like, we are a school, I'm not just a classroom that is inviting you in, but we are a school, we are a district that is open to you partnering with us and vice versa, because it's all about the students.

Julie Bedell: We do say we want to be very warm and welcoming, And post-pandemic, there's more things you have to do to actually walk into the school. But it's totally possible. And it's not—it can be at other times besides conferencing, but it's really important that parents come in the building, see where their kids sit throughout the day, see what kinds of things they do on the bulletin board, make sure you send things home. I would say teacher communication every week is really good.

Kevin Carlson: After the break: More-effective teacher communication. Stay with us.

Mid-roll Announcer: New from Benchmark Education: Climbing the Ladder of Reading and Writing: Meeting the Needs of ALL Learners . Co-edited by literacy experts Nancy Young and Jan Hasbrouck, based on Young's popular infographic, The Ladder of Reading and Writing, the book presents effective ways to address the needs of all students as they master essential literacy skills.

Dr. Jan Hasbrouck (mid-roll): We wrote Climbing the Ladder of Reading and Writing to support the work of a wide audience, including educators, parents, and community members to have current evidence-based practical information to support all learners.

Mid-roll Announcer: A foreword by Maryanne Wolf and chapters by subject area experts Kymyona Burk, Nathan H. Clemens, Margie Gillis, Sharon Vaughn, and many others.

Dr. Nancy Young (mid-roll): Every student deserves effective literacy instruction and support, differentiated for the wide range of ease in skill mastery.

Mid-roll Announcer: Climbing the Ladder of Reading and Writing is available now. Get your copy at PD Essentials dot com.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: What is the practical advice around that communication piece? And I'm going to tell you why I'm asking that question. So, long time ago when I was in the classroom, one of the things that I did—and now I look back and I kind of think I could have done that much better—is, I spent hours each week creating this, what I thought was a beautiful newsletter, but I don't think it was very useful. I don't remember the things I put on there, but I don't think that they really furthered communication and furthered relationships. So the time I was spending probably wasn't what—I didn't get a desired outcome for it. So tell me a little bit more about how can you create that, the communication in a more effective way.

Julie Bedell: Well, I cantell you from my end, I think you have to make it kind of quick for parents to read right now. Like, get to the point. Don't overelaborate. When you need to elaborate and you do that every once in a while, it'll be read, if you don't do it every week. But parents are pretty busy too. That's the way it is. So get to the point. I'm talking about a newsletter. If you have a child that you want to talk to the parent about, I think it's great if you can call the parent in, but sometimes email can work just as well. And I would do that. I would use an email.

Amy Fleisher: I think part of it is that my own experience of, I have two kids and my first son, school was a good, natural fit for him just in how he learned. And then my second son has some language-based learning disabilities and that teacher-parent communication came, it had a whole new weight to it when it came to working with his teachers. Because sometimes I was communicating like, “Oh, we had a full meltdown last night and we didn't get any of that homework done.”

If he ever sees this, he'll be like, “Mom…” Because he's about to graduate from high school.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: (laughing)Yeah, I've got one of those too.

Amy Fleisher: That was ten years ago. But just, it’s… how tricky it is on either side sometimes to have those connections. And I think that we just assume that it's an intuitive part of teaching, that it's just what you do. Like, we take all of our courses and our teacher prep that tell us what to do. But really, there isn't a way that we're taught how to interact with parents. And hopefully we'll be on a team or in a building where we can collaborate on a newsletter that's straightforward and simple. But then, how do you go that next step where you're building those bridges when maybe you have to eventually have a hard conversation? Or when they've got some baggage from their own experience or from previous years or previous school, how do you connect with them in a way that is not too much, but is also saying, “We're here to build this partnership and to find ways that we—really, everybody here wants your child to be successful.” And so just as much as we know—I mean, that was actually one of the research pieces that we read was that. And I think we just take it for granted that, yes, every single—the research showed that parents, regardless of their socioeconomic situation or background, want their child to be successful in school. It seems obvious, but there's actually research supporting that. And so I think remembering that as teachers and then, the newsletter, but then also kind of figuring out how do you go on to that next piece of, we need to have a conversation or we'd like to investigate things further if a student is struggling or if a student is so accelerated, what are some options for you and your child?

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Well, I think you don't want that that first communication to be a negative one. You know, that I'm reaching out to you now because there's a problem. Like, that's not going to be as received or responsive. You know, if—

Julie Bedell: The defense of being the parent.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Yes, exactly.

Julie Bedell: I was thinking, you know, sometimes I think in schools we have these big meetings where we have parents there and a lot of people there, and that could often feel very intimidating. You have to be very, maybe, thoughtful of that. Some people might like the school psychologist there and the school counselor there. It depends on what you're there to discuss. But if it's something you can handle yourself or handle with one other person, that might be good. Just being a little sensitive to that. I mean, we're not perfect. We try our best. But people, like Amy said, come to school as a parent bringing all of their schooling with them. And it could have been great. It could have been a really negative experience. So it's good to be mindful of all of that.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Yeah, I think that's a good point, is being mindful, right? We all bring our bias, we all bring our perspectives, we all bring our past experiences, both to our classroom as an educator, but also parents who are saying, “Here's my child and I want them to be successful, I may not know how to help them be successful.” And that's really a lot of that communication and where the educator can help further that along.

Amy Fleisher: Yes, yes.

Julie Bedell: We all have the same goal. You know, it's about the kid. So yeah, keeping that in mind is really important.

Amy Fleisher: I think the reason I'm nodding so vigorously, just two things that popped into my head. One of them is that one of the positive outcomes of all the online schooling that we did is that there's so many more ways that we can have that really quick, just one-to-one connection with a parent, where we use an application in our school district that allows us to send text messages without revealing our phone number, without revealing a parent's phone number, where we can just say if a student has done a beautiful job during a dictation or something and is really proud, I can snap a picture and send that off and say, “Wow, look at what so-and-so accomplished today during our small group, he's so excited about it.” So there are ways to do that. Or saying, “Yes, I'd love to meet with you. I know you're busy, I'm busy. Let's do a ten-minute Zoom session.” We don't need to necessarily have a parent meeting. Although I do think for some of those bigger conversations that there's that in-person piece.

But what Julie was talking about, or maybe it was—I can't remember who said it a second ago, just about parents not necessarily knowing what to do. And I think that was a huge eye-opener for me because I was a teacher before I had kids, and then I had kids and knew, okay, now I need to support them at home, especially my younger one with his reading. And I realized I had no idea what to do. And I was a teacher and I didn't know what to do.

Do I just fill his room with books? Do I just read to him every day? What do I actually do? And fortunately, because my other son had been in Julie's class, I had this resource who could help coach me—nothing too intense, nothing overwhelming—but coach me in, “Here's how you help him sound out words, here is the kind of thing that he's ready to read, here's how you can reinforce some of the things that he's learning in class that relate to spelling and writing and reading.”

And so I think remembering that as much as parents might be there and eager to help, they don't always necessarily know what to do. And we know that a lot of the things that are on the market for helping parents, especially with early literacy things, are not necessarily the things that are actually going to help them, like fancy flashcards with memory—you know, that kind of thing. That if we can actually take a minute and provide some very specific details about, “Five minutes a day, practice this word list, here are the spelling sounds we're working on right now”—great. And in my experience with working with Tier 2 students is, parents are so eager for them to make progress and close that gap that they're willing to put in whatever time that we request. I don't think it has to be that significant, I think it can just be a little bit. But if they have the tools and feel like, “Okay, now I know what to go do,” they're a lot more excited to go do it.

Julie Bedell: And to know the commitment can be five minutes a day for a first grader.

Amy Fleisher: Yes.

Julie Bedell: Exactly. Everyday practice, that mass practice, gets you the skill. And if you can reread what the teacher read with your child at school today, that's really going to help. And it doesn't have to be big to do that, a big amount of time or a lot of time.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Yeah. One of the throughlines in our conversation here is that time piece, that things don't have to—because parents are very busy people too. I mean, everybody's busy now. But there's things that can be done that they don't realize, when you're driving to the grocery store in the evening, you know—

Julie Bedell: Captive audience right there.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Yes yes, exactly! Or while you're putting the dishes away, I mean, these simple things that can be done. But something else that I think came through is also the need to explain things too, because there is—I think, we're all bombarded with so much information on a daily basis. And right now, especially because literacy is such a hot topic, which is fantastic, parents that may not have been involved in literacy education in their life might be hearing a lot of things in the media or things are talked about at the school, and bringing things, explaining things so that they understand what it is and why it's important. I think of the term phonological awareness. If I went and told my husband that we need to practice phonological awareness with our kids, he would be like, “What?” So it's bringing that down to a “what” and a “why” also.

Julie Bedell: Yeah.

Amy Fleisher: Yeah. It's been a while, but during Covid, Julie and I hosted a K-2 parent reading night, and it was such a good exercise for us because we used Scarborough's Rope as our model and we tried to, “How do we distill this into very parent-friendly, non-educator ways of understanding?” Like, “These are all the pieces and parts that your child is working on to become a skilled reader, here's how they all come together, here are some things that you can do even if this isn't your background.” And it was really interesting to sort of get out of our own teacher jargon and the things we're reading and listening to and think about like, “Oh, how can we actually make this useful and tangible for parents?”

We should do that again, Julie.

Julie Bedell: I know.When you're doing x, y, or z, you are building phoneme awareness. Or when you're, “This is how you sound through a word with your child,” or maybe, “Start with the first sound and then get them going and have them sound,” or “Back up to the last word they read correctly and have them go again.” I mean, just some little things like that. The “how” is so important.

Kevin Carlson: After the break: The outcome of the parent reading night. Stay with us.

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Dr. Jennifer Nigh: I love that idea and I love that you did that. And I want to hear what the response was to that or what the outcome was, because I imagine also that that explanation not only clarified things that they might be hearing, but it may be very different than what they remember how they learned to read or things that they were asked to do and say and practices that we may now know that are not evidence-based. I'm curious what was the outcome, because that sounds like a great way that you gave them the information that they needed.

Julie Bedell: People were pretty pleased. You’re always thinking, oh, could some more people show up? But we did have it on a recording or have the PowerPoint available. And you know, people are busy and you can't gauge your success on that. I think we had 50 or 60. It wasn't like we had three people.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Great! Yeah.

Julie Bedell: But it was fun and hopefully it was meaningful for parents and hopefully very relevant because we—both of us really try to step out of our teacher role and put on our parent hat and think about how we would have needed something we didn't know anything about be told to us so we could understand it better, you know?

You know, it's kind of like with the advent of audiobooks, I've noticed over the 39 years that people, there are some parents that plug their kid in a little bit instead of enjoying the book with them or reading to them, which I really advocate reading to your child all the way through, even if they can read themselves, because—but when you just plug them in, it's some days we all have to do that, okay?

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Guilty! (laughter)

Julie Bedell: You don't have the discussion with your child about what they're reading and that, and just getting people to think about things like that, that maybe it is worth carving out the time because comprehension is really an all-that discussion and conversation, and it sets them up for their own reading a little bit later. They'll be able to read harder books and comprehend harder books.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Yeah, well, encouraging that conversation around books, or the story or whatever that they're reading together—

Julie Bedell: There’s a lot of value.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: —strengthens their vocabulary and their background knowledge and amazing for our multilingual learners too, who might also be acquiring English or another language too, so that talk and that encouragement around that is so important. So I love that suggestion.

Amy Fleisher: When you just mentioned multilingual learner, back to the part about, that this is a lot of work for teachers, I think, to encouraging teachers and remembering to take advantage of the resources in your own building, and that you don't always have to go it alone. If you have to have a conversation that's difficult with a parent or you're not sure what to do, that in the past, I've reached out to our multilingual teacher and I was sending home some materials for a student to sound out and the parent was asking, “Well, should we be sounding this out in our home language or in English?” And I just was like, “Oh, wow, that's an excellent question.” So asking those other people, trusting that there are other experts in your building—you don't have to go it alone.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Yes. Yeah.

Amy Fleisher: That there are other teachers who are willing to—like, as a specialist, I'm willing to attend any parent meeting that a teacher might ask me to come to.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: But I think something important that I heard you say in there too, as an educator, is that nobody has all the answers. And I think part of building a strong home school connection, a relationship, is that, in that situation, Amy, where you may not have had the answer, but you knew who you could go to and what resources you could tap into to make sure that you gave the parent the answer that was the right answer. And that really just humanizes the relationship, I think, and it breaks down those barriers of “I'm the teacher, I have all the knowledge—"

Amy Fleisher: Yes!

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: “—you're the parent, you're over there doing your thing.” To me, that's a great humanizing example of how you really strengthen the relationship.

Julie Bedell: I'm really happy that we have conferences in November, because I really feel like my real teaching starts after I've really met the parent. I already know the kids pretty well. I get, you could call it the other side from the parent. And then I really have a pretty clear picture of where I'm going or what I need to do or how much I can access at home, because maybe someone has ten kids and who knows what extra help the kid's going to get. Maybe he's going to get it from a sibling or something. But it's really nice to get the parents’ side of things, and maybe you might find it sounds distorted, but it still is really—most of the time, I would say 99 percent of the time, it feels pretty clear. And it helps your teaching of that child and it helps you move that child forward, not just academically but maybe emotionally, that kind of thing.

We're in it together.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Yeah, in it together. You just made me think of something: In your experience, do you have any good recommendations for how you, at the beginning of the year, get more of that information from the parent about what is going on in their home, what are their goals for their children, those types of things? Do you have any practices or advice you have for the teacher to get that information early in the year?

Amy Fleisher: Well, I know Julie, I'm sure you in a second you'll speak to it, I know you, you as a team that’s something you do. I think as a specialist, sometimes I don't start working with kids until after those first couple of weeks where we're doing assessments and figuring out who might need that support. But I send out a family questionnaire, a family reading questionnaire and just ask some pretty broad questions about your child's language development: “Was there any history of language acquisition difficulty in your childhood?” Or, “Any family history of learning disabilities?” Just kind of trying to cast a wide net to just get a little bit—because we know the genetic components of some of those things that, if I can get a little bit more of that information and then just asking that big open question of, “Is there anything else you want me to know about your child?” And, “Are there any concerns you have?” I think sometimes parents just want to be asked, you know? Please tell me more.

Julie Bedell: Well, we do a questionnaire but we also have a whole school open house kind of thing where parents are all invited in. And we've gone to a little more casual model at our school where it's not “curriculum night,” where we're not just sitting them in their child’s seat, going through all the curriculum and all the standards. I mean, we kind of used to do that. Now it's more like, “Bring your child with you. Let them show you their desk.” And you're there and you facilitate conversation. And it's lovely, actually.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Well, that goes back to your very initial point was, “We're a welcoming space, we're going to project that culture across our classrooms, our school, maybe even our district, because we want you to feel welcome here.” And Julie, what you just mentioned is a perfect example of that. It's not the teacher standing in front of the room going through a checklist of things, but it is trying to create this comfortable atmosphere of being welcome in the school. And I think many of the things that you mentioned today circle back to that ultimate goal, and keeping things simple and keeping that communication open and giving that positive communication, so that when you have to have those difficult conversations there's more trust and openness there to have that. So I think those are all wonderful recommendations.

Before we close out this great conversation, do you have any final words of advice for educators or parents as they're thinking about home and school connections and how to really strengthen those relationships?

Amy Fleisher: Oh, one thing that I actually wrote a note about, that I forgot to say earlier, that I would say is that—and this is not a plug for the book—but I do think that as teachers, because reading in particular, reading and writing, are such complex tasks that children have to learn, they're not just going to pick it up necessarily on their own, we know that using tools like the Ladder of Reading and Writing to help parents understand when you are having those conversations, using some of those visual tools, whether it's Scarborough's Rope or Nancy's ladder, to help parents understand the complexity of it, but also the simplicity of it. “Here's where we are on this ladder and everybody's going to climb to the top of the ladder here. But your child might be going really fast up that ladder, or we might be taking a slower time and we need to do a little bit of extra.”

So I think just using all the tools that you can as a teacher to really make that connection and help parents understand what's happening.

Julie Bedell: I totally concur. I started using the ladder to show people where their kids are, and that some kids do start at a different place and really have to learn a lot of skills before they start really climbing that ladder and that, I can't remember if she has percentages on it now, but there used to be, and it makes parents see that it's normal to be in the orange. You know, you can still climb and maybe you're going to work a little bit harder at first. Maybe you're going to go see Miss Fleisher three times a week and get a little boost—

Amy Fleisher: Four. (laughter)

Julie Bedell: Four times a week, yeah. But whatever you're going to do right now is really going to help. So yeah, let us do these interventions with your child because we really want to get them climbing that ladder.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: I think that is a wonderful send off to our conversation today. I love all of these ideas and I know that our listeners will be taking them and using them in their own classrooms and really building that strong home-school connection, because research shows it matters and that's what we want to do, is those things that matter.

This has been wonderful, ladies. Amy and Julie, it is always such a pleasure to chat with you and thank you for everything that you do. Thank you for your advocacy for literacy with the Read Washington Organization, and of course, for sharing your knowledge and your passion on this topic in the book, Climbing the Ladder of Reading and Writing. So thank you both very much.

Kevin Carlson: Thank you, Amy Fleisher and Julie Bedell. Thank you, Jen Nigh, and thank you for listening to Teachers Talk Shop .

Learn more from Amy and Julie and an all-star lineup of literacy experts in the PD Essentials book, Climbing the Ladder of Reading and Writing, edited by Doctors Jan Hasbrouck and Nancy Young. Grounded in the latest research, this bestseller draws on Nancy Young's transformative infographic, The Ladder of Reading and Writing, to address the diverse needs of students and explore how to improve literacy outcomes for all students. The book is available at Benchmark Education dot com. Get your copy today.

For Benchmark Education, I'm Kevin Carlson.