As part of our commitment to celebrating, uplifting, and highlighting teachers and their incredible work, we’re introducing a regular series called Talk to Teachers, where we interview teachers about their experience teaching reading and learning about teaching reading. 

For this installment, I spoke with Katie Brunson, an elementary reading interventionist in Ballston Spa, New York. The following conversation was edited for clarity and concision. 

_____

How did you become a teacher and what is your current job? 

I became a teacher because I had teachers that impacted my life in such a positive way that I wanted to help others in the same way. It felt like a calling. 

I’m an elementary reading interventionist, which means I support struggling readers. 

What did you learn about teaching reading in college? 

My Master’s Degree was actually somewhat aligned with the science of reading. I learned about the importance of phonics and phonemic awareness, but when I started teaching, none of the programs we used supported that.

What was your teaching practice like when you started teaching?

It was full-on balanced literacy. We worked on many different skills including phonics, vocabulary, reading fluency, and writing. We were trying to solve everything all at once. We weren’t teaching explicitly or with intentionality. 

When did you start learning about structured literacy? 

First some back story: we got a new superintendent, Ken Slentz, who was knowledgeable about the science of reading. He saw that 20% of the students in our district were entering special education, after being identified as having a learning disability. He realized that we weren’t meeting the needs of our students and that we needed a high-quality curriculum. In response, he put together a reading committee, and he personally shared a lot of research about reading with the committee. Ultimately, the committee chose to adopt the Bookworms curriculum. From there, the superintendent got our four elementary school principals on board with the idea and got them to understand why the science of reading is so important. 

So then our amazing principal Kathleen came back to her school, and she met with every single team and department and explained the science of reading to them. She also explained that she had been wrong, told us that we would love the new changes to our curriculum, and promised us that we would work together to improve our reading instruction.

Kathleen had gained our trust. She worked very hard to do that. We saw her as our leader. We still see her that way. So when she was telling us about this epiphany she was having and this learning she was doing, we really listened to her.  Her mantra was “Know Better, Do Better,” and that became our mantra too. 

What happened next?

Kathleen actually took away our LLI kits. We were initially sad about this, but she said, “don’t worry. I’m just going to box them up and put them in the storage room. But I promise you that once you get going with Bookworms, you’re going to see why you won’t ever want to use LLI again.”

You can still go into the storage room, and all those books are still there. She never threw them away. She promised that she wouldn’t, and she kept that promise. But guess what? We’ve never asked for those kits back. 

I think this shows the trust we had in Kathleen. She made it clear that we were going together, as a school, to improve reading instruction. We’re all going to give it our best shot. We’re going to implement this new curriculum with integrity. Trusting and being trusted by our principal made such a big difference. 

How did your district support your shift to Bookworms?  

Well, before the school year even started, our district fully invested in professional development. They paid teachers for 4 or 5 extra days to come in and learn about our new materials: Bookworms and Fundations. Those days were intense, but they were essential. The district also invested in literacy coaches, so they could help teachers and reading teachers with implementation. 

That Fall, Sharon Walpole and her team came to our building for three days and worked with teachers. They identified what they were struggling with and really got into the weeds and showed the teachers how to implement parts of the Bookworm curriculum. 

How has your job changed since the adoption of Bookworms? 

Before Bookworms, I was always just scrambling, figuring out what I was going to do in my next session or lesson. I spent so much time pulling materials from Teachers Pay Teachers. Just the other day, I was looking for an old file on my computer, and I found all of these writing prompts I had created from scratch. I used to spend so much time creating stuff like that every week. 

Now, I don’t have to focus on creating or finding materials. We already have good materials. When I’m not teaching, I spend time thinking about and identifying which kids are going to need which lessons and which ones are ready to move on. I’m spending time playing the lessons in my head. I’m reading ahead in the book I’m using for my fluency group, so I can fully understand the story and am ready for the discussion. I’m not furiously running around gathering materials now. I’m studying how I can best deliver the materials I already have. It’s so much more intentional and responsive to the individual kid or the individual group.  

The other thing I do is look at the data we collect and really dig into it. We help classroom teachers understand that data as well and help support them to make adjustments as needed. 

How has your instructional practice changed since your school adopted Bookworms?

The word I keep coming back to is “intentional.”  Every part of my teaching is now intentional: what I teach, the order in which I teach, the scope and sequence I use, it’s all intentional. We always taught phonics, but it wasn’t right. It wasn’t systematic. It wasn’t with intent. No one is claiming we didn’t teach kids that short “a” sound is “ahh.” We just weren’t doing it well.   

How have student outcomes changed since the adoption of Bookworks?

You know, I saw that when we first started using Bookworms, we were identifying 20% of our kids as special ed. and almost all of our kids were either yellow or red on DIBELS? That’s just not happening anymore, even after Covid. Our intervention groups are very, very small right now because our tier 1 classroom instruction is so strong. This allows us, as reading interventionists, to run tier 2 groups for classroom teachers. This allows us to do more one-on-one interventions, where you really see more bang for your buck because you can be so much more intentional and targeted.    

Is there anything else you’d like to add? 

I have a lot of guilt. So much guilt. I have even wondered if we should run a reading program over the summer for high school students. I know there are kids I worked with ten years ago who are still struggling to read. I couldn’t help them well enough then, but I know I can help them better now.