Ep 43. How advocacy is changing reading instruction
with Jamie Metsala
This transcript was created with speech-to-text software. It was reviewed before posting but may contain errors. Credit to Deepika Tung.
You can listen to the episode here: Chalk & Talk Podcast.
Ep 43. How advocacy is changing reading instruction with Jamie Metsala
[00:00:00] Anna Stokke: Welcome to Chalk and Talk, a podcast about education and math. I am Anna Stokke, a math professor and your host.
Welcome to another great episode of Chalk and Talk. My guest in this episode is Dr. Jamie Metsala, who is one of two content area experts on the Ontario Human Rights Commission's Right to Read public inquiry. Jamie will be a keynote speaker at Research Ed Toronto, which is taking place June 6th to 7th, 2025.
Consider joining us there. I'll put a link to the registration page in the show notes. Now, this episode is all about reading and how we can ensure every child receives the reading instruction they need to succeed. But, as you know, I advocate that all children have a right to learn math as well, so that will come up in our discussion too.
Jamie shares her expertise on the importance of strong early instruction in foundational reading skills, the pitfalls of balanced literacy, and the urgent need for evidence-based practices in education. We explore the role of parent advocacy and the far-reaching implications of the Ontario's Right to Read report, not just for Ontario, but for education systems across Canada and beyond.
Jamie explains why universal screening matters, how structured literacy is crucial for all readers, and what effective intervention looks like. We also discuss the importance of teacher preparation programs and ongoing professional development to equip educators with the tools they need to teach reading successfully.
Jamie offers valuable advice for those advocating for change because too many provinces and states are still using ineffective reading instruction, and that needs to change. Educators, parents, and advocates will find this conversation packed with insights and practical strategies for pushing for systemic reform.
As I listened to Jamie, I was struck once again by the parallels between reading and math. If we truly want to set students up for success, we need to commit to evidence based approaches in both subjects. This is an important episode, please share it widely. Just a reminder that articles and documents mentioned in the episode can be found on the resource page.
Now, without further ado, let's get started.
I have a very special guest today, Dr. Jamie Metsala, and she is joining me from Halifax, Nova Scotia, here in Canada. She was one of two content area experts on the Ontario Human Rights Commission's Right to Read Public Inquiry and we are going to talk a lot about that today. She is a professor of education and the Gail and Stephen Jarislowsky Chair in Learning Disabilities at Mount St. Vincent University in Halifax. And a former tenured faculty member at the University of Western Ontario and at the University of Maryland. She has a PhD. from the Center for Applied Cognitive Science from the University of Toronto. She's also a registered clinical psychologist. She conducts research on reading acquisition, reading disabilities, and interventions.
And she is a vocal advocate for evidence-based instruction. She's also written publicly about reading, including an excellent article for Maclean's Magazine that we will link to on the resource page. I am so excited to have you here, Jamie. Welcome to the podcast.
[00:04:05] Jamie Metsala: Thank you for having me, Anna.
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[00:04:06] Anna Stokke: So, you worked with the Ontario Human Rights Commission on a public inquiry into the province's education system to find out whether students with reading disabilities were getting the instruction and interventions they needed. So, for a little bit of background, can you tell us why did the Ontario Human Rights Commission conduct a public inquiry on reading?
[00:04:29] Jamie Metsala: So, although I wasn't involved that early on, my understanding is, first of all, the Ontario Human Rights Commission had a lot of individual cases over the years go through by parents, you know, whose students had dyslexia or reading disabilities and didn't get the education they need.
And so, parents paid a lot of money for either private schools or private tutoring and assessments, etcetera. So, it's certainly something that the commission was familiar with. At the same time, there are a lot of very strong and very knowledgeable parent advocacy groups in Ontario, and so I'll include in there, International Dyslexia Association Ontario, Decoding Dyslexia Ontario, Learning Disabilities Association of Canada, and Dyslexia Canada.
And so those are the ones I know about, and they came together to really bring to light the extent of this issue for the families and children that they represented to the Ontario Human Rights Commission. And I think at that point, Linda Siegel became involved very early on, and Dr. Siegel is a leading researcher in the area of reading acquisition and disabilities.
And they worked together to really design an inquiry that asked the right questions, collected the right data and could really be helpful, uh, to the province in doing an assessment and giving recommendations on where to go.
[00:05:54] Anna Stokke: So, it was really parent advocacy that caused this to happen. Is that right?
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[00:06:00] Jamie Metsala: That's my understanding, yes. It's really, uh, parent advocacy.
[00:06:03] Anna Stokke: Way to go, parents. And don't forget about math. So now we need some parent advocacy groups for math across Canada. So that's next. But we are mostly talking about reading today. My understanding is that the inquiry found that Ontario wasn't only failing students with reading disabilities, but many others as well.
In fact, I read something that you wrote, and you wrote that, as of 2019, at least a quarter of grade three students didn't meet the Ontario provincial reading standard. How does this compare to other provinces?
[00:06:40] Jamie Metsala: So, first of all, let me say that, that 25 percent is probably a low estimate of the number of students who didn't meet expectations. And International Dyslexia Association Ontario in 2021 actually put out a report called Lifting the Curtain on EQA Scores. And an important issue that I'll comment on, there were many in the report, is that students are also able to use either assistive technology or a scribe when they do those tests.
And so, I think it was in 2019, about 18 percent of students were using that assistive technology to have the passages read to them or to have an adult reading the questions and then writing the answers. And when they looked at the percentage who passed the test unassisted, that was actually 62%. And so, in 2005, they reported that, you know, 56 percent were passing unassisted.
So, that's a lot of time and a lot of focus on English language arts and reading and not really seeing it come up to the extent that the ministry or anyone would really want it to. And we have similar results here in Nova Scotia, Anna. We have about 70 to 72 percent of our students in grade three who pass those, uh, provincial reading exams.
But similarly, we have an undisclosed number who are using assistive technology. And the numbers are even lower when you look at provincial exams in grade three and in grade six on written output. So how are students able to compose and write texts? The other aspect of the OHRC Right to Read inquiry was that they noted other inequities.
So, for example, if you look at families from higher socioeconomic backgrounds, a higher percentage of children are learning to read than those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. I think both the Hamilton newspaper as well as a Halifax newspaper ran stories about reading achievement and the relationship to postal codes.
You know, really showing those inequities and then, of course, one of the major reasons for the inquiry was that students with or at risk for reading disabilities or having any special education needs, you know, were passing those tests at much, much lower rates. And so, I think that you would find very similar results across Canada.
Again, we do here in Nova Scotia, and I think that they are very similar in the states as well.
[00:09:15] Anna Stokke: I just want to back up just so that People who are listening and don't know. You mentioned the EQAO, and that's an Ontario provincial test, correct?
[00:09:26] Jamie Metsala: That is an Ontario Provincial Test. It's given in literacy for reading and writing, as well as mathematics in grade three and grade six.
And the report that the IDA Ontario did also looked at the grade 10 secondary school literacy test in Ontario.
[00:09:43] Anna Stokke: I think here in Manitoba, we don't even have a real provincial test for reading or math at those low grades, to be honest.
[00:09:53] Jamie Metsala: That seems very problematic, because what I see as the major purpose of these tests is not to tell us how any one individual child is doing, but really, it's for the responsibility and accountability of a provincial education system and how they are doing on achievement outcomes. And so, you know, it's hard to first recognize the problem and then try to improve the conditions if you are not having those types of measures.
[00:10:20] Anna Stokke: Absolutely.
And I mean, that's something I think a lot of us want to advocate for, more accountability and transparency, because, you know, our students deserve to have good education. And if we can't see what's going on, we can't improve. Right?
[00:10:37] Jamie Metsala: For sure.
[00:10:38] Anna Stokke: You talked about the statistics and these statistics actually are likely underestimating the number of students who are struggling to read. Now, does this serve as an alarm bell for Canadian education systems?
[00:10:53] Jamie Metsala: Well, you know, it took me a while to realize that not everyone feels the same urgency that I do, or that many of us do when we look at these statistics. And I think there are a couple reasons for that. Sometimes we are looking at them without thinking about those, the numbers for the unassisted, pass rate.
But another reason is that sometimes we are looking at that 70 percent, 75 percent and it's like, well, that's like a B on a test. That's not bad. So, we are really not realizing the number of students who are being left behind and left behind so early in their educational careers. So, you are going to have children leaving that kindergarten to grade three range, not able to do the work in upper elementary.
Similarly, kids leaving grade six to face middle school and high school work, which is really based on a lot of reading and writing and not able to be successful and engage in that work. And so, we are really shutting doors for many students. And again, if you look at different sectors of the population, you know, those numbers really rise.
So, in some schools, we may have as many as one or two children who aren't meeting expectations and who aren't able then to go on and meet outcomes year after year.
[00:12:08] Anna Stokke: My guess is that these things kind of snowball over time. They certainly do in math, because math is really cumulative, as I mentioned over and over again on this podcast.
So, when kids fall behind early on, it can be really hard to get caught up. And you have mentioned several times, there's also this inequity thing that happens that parents who have the ability to get help for their child, get that help. But then students who don't have those resources at home don't get the help, right?
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So, we see these gaps kind of widen.
[00:12:41] Jamie Metsala: Exactly.
[00:12:49] Anna Stokke: My understanding is that the dominant approach to early reading instruction across the country has been balanced literacy. A lot of my listeners may not know what that is. I mean, I am not always even sure what it means because I come from a math background. So, let’s get some background on this, maybe a Coles Notes version.
What is balanced literacy, and for how long has it been the way we teach reading in Canada?
[00:13:19] Jamie Metsala: I think if we look back around the early 80s in Ontario at least, that's when practices that are aligned with the whole language philosophy really became dominant. One of the founding fathers of, uh, whole language, Ken Goodman, he had a theory or a model of reading, and that theory is called a psycholinguistic guessing game.
What he meant by that is skilled readers make meaning from texts by using their prior knowledge and their oral language skills, as well as by using the contextual cues or sources of knowledge within the text. And so, within this model, decoding each word wasn't important. What was important was kind of these anticipatory predictions of the words that were coming up in text.
And so, this is kind of translated into what we know today in the classroom as kind of the three queuing system or really teaching children to use kind of the meaning of a text to anticipate and problem solve words, to help them use the grammar and structure of the text, to help them anticipate words, as well as 1Q is kind of helping them recognize sound symbol relationships and decoding part of words or full words.
And so, these three queuing systems were thought to get better integrated with skilled reading. And so, then it makes sense that while we set out to teach these skills to students and watch these become better integrated so that they can gain meaning from text. In Ontario, Frank Smith was a psycholinguist at OYC, uh, U of T, and he wrote a book in 1971.
That was also very influential. And it also subscribed to that notion of reading as a psycholinguistic guessing game. And I think what's also important about this is that within this philosophy and this approach to instruction, planned explicit or direct teaching of word reading, so learning really how to map those letters onto sound and to decode each word, were seen as not only not important, but they were also seemed to almost interfere with the fluidity of which children could gain meaning from text.
So, that's kind of the origins and, beliefs that went into whole language. And you might be surprised to hear me say that it actually wasn't a bad theory. And it wasn't a bad theory for a couple of reasons. One, it was viable. That could be how reading developed. We didn't know. And two, what I think makes it a really good theory or model is that it's falsifiable.
Really a nugget of the scientific method is that a model is falsifiable. And we had many cognitive psychologists who then went on to research and, dare I say, show that this model was right. And so, I think of, you know, my past mentor Keith Stanovich who with his colleague Rich West set out in the late 70s, early 80s to really show that skilled readers use the cueing systems more effectively and that's how they differed from less skilled readers.
But what they found was in fact that word recognition is so quick and automatic in skilled reading and for skilled readers that there isn't even time for all those other cueing systems to kick in. And it's actually the novice readers or readers who are struggling that rely on that context because they have to, their word reading skills aren't quick and efficient.
And so, what that really did for the education field, research like that, and there were other cognitive science who looked at other aspects, was it really told us, well, the goal of teaching these foundational word reading skills needs to be, that children become automatic. It becomes so mastered that children can recognize words quickly.
What this allows us to do is to put our cognitive resources towards making meaning of text. Texts are complex. They have lots of wonderful stories and ideas and difficult concepts, and we need to attend to those, not to struggling to decode the words.
[00:17:29] Anna Stokke: A couple things I think I heard there. So, first of all, Ken Goodman, was he Canadian?
[00:17:34] Jamie Metsala: No, Ken Goodman is American.
[00:17:36] Anna Stokke: Oh, those Americans bringing their bad ideas to Canada. I am just joking for everybody out there! I have a lot of American listeners.
The other thing I am hearing, I think, is that, again, it was kind of this idea that look at how good readers actually read. So that must be the best way to teach reading, right?
But it's flawed. It's a flawed idea. Because, you know, good readers have already figured out the, the foundations. Does that sound right?
[00:18:05] Jamie Metsala: It does. I think when you look at skilled performance, it gives you the goal state or the end state. But you are starting with very novice learners. And then we need to look to the instructional research, which is how do we teach to move these novice learners along that continuum to our goal state.
And so, I really like to emphasize the importance of instructional research rather than that basic cognitive science for telling us how to get there.
[00:18:33] Anna Stokke: And then the other thing I heard you talk about a bit was automaticity and making some of these things automatic so that it frees up cognitive load. So, and of course that reminded me of things like times tables, that times tables have to be automatic.
When, when students are doing math, you want times tables to be automatic because it makes it easier to do more complex things. Otherwise, you get hung up on these basic things, right?
[00:18:58] Jamie Metsala: Exactly.
[00:18:59] Anna Stokke: Similar things going on with math and reading.
All right, so, let's talk a bit about what the Right to Read Inquiry found. So, what did the Right to Read Inquiry conclude are effective approaches to teaching young children foundational reading skills?
[00:19:21] Jamie Metsala: So, the conclusions of the Right to Read report were really similar to other national reports that had come out, and I am thinking of the U.S. National Reading Panel, which came out in 2000, the Rose Report in the U. K., which came out in 2006. So, they were all really consistent in how to teach young children or children with reading disabilities these foundational word reading, and I'll add spelling skills. So, I think that a couple important things to note were what we teach.
And the areas of what we teach for these foundational word reading and spelling skills are phonics instruction. So really teaching students the letter sound, or we call them grapheme phoneme correspondences, and then how to use those to sound out words, and how to spell words. As well, we need to explicitly teach children phonemic awareness, and what this means is that we need to teach children how to blend those sounds into words, as well as how to pull apart the individual sounds and words so that they can represent each sound with a grapheme to spell words.
And so, if we think of a child trying to spell the word sat, they need to pull that apart into the s-a-t, and they need to represent each sound with a letter. So phonemic awareness is something we know more about now than we did, let's say back in the day when I was taught to read, and that really is an area that can be very tricky and difficult for students.
So, we mainly want to teach that while we are teaching children to decode and sound out those words, and spell words. And of course, the other part of proficient word reading recognition is the vocabulary, knowledge, the meaning of words. We need to know the meaning of words and map that as well to the orthography, the written language, and the phonology, the spoken language.
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We do that beginning in kindergarten. And then kindergarten and grade one, we are really working on the more simple connections, but in early as grade two, we start to really focus on the more advanced phonics skills, so those more rare and complex, uh, orthographic patterns, as well as a focus on morphology, prefixes, suffixes, those smallest, uh, units of meanings in words, and reading multi syllabic because texts get harder and harder, and we have to be very efficient at reading more complex words.
So, that's the developmental pathway and the instruction that the Right to Read report set out. And I think there's just two other things to mention, and that is that we teach that content through explicit or direct instruction. And that really means that we teach the knowledge and skills through direct explanation, modeling, scaffolded practice, and independent practice all the way to mastery. And as well, we lay out the system in a systematic way. So, we teach from the most simple, as well as frequent sound symbol correspondences and we work through to the most complex patterns.
And so that approach is really different than what might be an incidental approach that we might see in more balanced literacy classrooms because there is some phonics in balanced literacy classrooms, but it might not be laid out the same way. It might not be directly explained and reinforced in the practice put in. Children need a lot of practice reading books, so that they build up this automatic word recognition that we are teaching.
[00:22:49] Anna Stokke: Okay, so I have a couple of follow up questions on that because earlier you mentioned that I think in the balanced literacy approaches, it was kind of assumed that explicit or systematic instruction actually interfered with students being able to read properly. Is that correct?
[00:23:08] Jamie Metsala: It is that having children attend to the individual letters and sounds of words and decoding each words, by some it was viewed as interfering with the fluency that students would build up gaining meaning for text if they were more predicting words. And I mean, we see that young children learning to read are very disfluent. It is a laborious process when they are first learning to sound out words.
And if you put a child in a pattern predictable book, which is what we use in balanced literacy classrooms, they can sound, uh, more fluent and like they are reading better. So, if you are reading a book where the sentence is repeated, he ran up to the, and you see a car and there's a picture of a car, a student can kind of memorize that sentence and then use the pictures and sound quite fluent and maybe more fluent than the child who's learning the explicit phonics at the beginning.
It's just that in order to reach that goal state of automatic word recognition, a child really needs to go through these stages where they are mapping those individual letters and words to their sounds. And it's what Linnea Airy called orthographic mapping to build up those representations in their mind. So, the next time they see those words, they recognize them on sight.
[00:24:29] Anna Stokke: Got it. And then you mentioned the recommendation that students really need a lot of practice reading to get good at reading. And that's also the same for math. Practice is probably the most important thing. Well, good instruction and practice.
So, was that not happening? Were students not supposed to be getting a lot of practice reading?
[00:24:52] Jamie Metsala: Well, I do think whole language also had other aspects and some other aspects were having very rich oral language classrooms, getting a lot of exposure to good children's literature and stories. So, things we would all want in an early reading classroom for sure.
Now, the difficulty is, is for many students who weren't catching on to that decoding piece, they weren't cracking the code, weren't able to get a lot of practice in reading. Again, they were really relying on these queuing systems, relying on pictures. And so, you are not able to get that practice that you need, even though the intent was to have them read lots of books.
And again, if I think Keith Stanovich pointed out, I think the article came out in 1986 about the Matthew effects in reading. And while a lot of people in education use that and think about those who are better at something get better, the real kernel of the Matthew effects in reading was this word decoding piece.
And so, students who got off on a good, quick start to accurately reading words, read more and that made this feedback loop, and they read more, and they enjoyed reading more and they got to be really good readers. So, children who were stuck with that decoding, they couldn't read more. And so, they were losing all that practice and not building those word reading skills or the other cognitive consequences of print.
And, you know, those are vocabulary, sentence structures, uh, knowledge of the world, all which will be important to further academic success as well as reading success. And so, the, getting off to a good trajectory in these word decoding skills are so important.
[00:26:36] Anna Stokke: This reminds me of my episode with Brian Poncy, and he talks about five reasons fluency is important.
In math, it's like, if you are really slow at doing problems, then you get fewer opportunities to respond. So, the more fluent you are, the more opportunities you have to respond, which makes you better at the thing you are learning or the thing you are trying to learn, which gives you more practice. And also, there's the positive reinforcement piece.
[00:27:06] Jamie Metsala: For sure.
[00:27:07] Anna Stokke: So, that's another piece. And so, I am hearing this sort of the same things with reading and math, by the way. So very, very similar issues. In fact, I think that's what it's like when you are trying to learn anything, right? Like, when you are in that acquisition stage and you are just very slow and, like you say, laborious, you have got to get a lot more practice so that you become fluent.
Now, according to the inquiry, were Ontario schools mostly using balanced literacy approaches?
[00:27:36] Jamie Metsala: Let me state just first of all that the focus of the report was on these foundational word reading skills, which leads to fluency. And the report also recognized that there are many other important aspects to a full English language arts program. And it's stated throughout the report.
And so, for example, that these skills are necessary but not sufficient. And that instruction really needs to look at other areas as well, such as oral language development, vocabulary, knowledge development, and writing, reading comprehension strategies. Those are all important areas that need focused instruction.
And one of the recommendations of the report was that as the ministry is changing curriculum in these other areas, that evidence be looked at more broadly. To really bring instruction in line with evidence for all of these components. And so, in saying that, they did find that looking at ministry and Board of Education documents, both on policy as well as teaching guidelines, that indeed balanced literacy was the dominant approach.
We have to note that there is variability, of course, across school boards, but really balanced literacy, that three queuing approach for teaching these foundational skills was dominant. You did have some boards of education who were trying to bring in parts of evidence-based instruction for these skills, but without a whole systems level approach, it really wasn't systematic enough, sustained enough, and having the resources to back it.
[00:29:15] Anna Stokke: What about interventions for young students who are having difficulty acquiring these reading skills? What did the OHRC inquiry recommend?
[00:29:25] Jamie Metsala: First of all, it's really important to recommend that the classroom instruction and curriculum changes that were recommended are also really important for these students who are struggling.
So, they need that classroom instruction and then we will also have fewer students struggling. Because think of it, if you have a third or a half of your students struggling, there's no way a tier two or remedial system can meet the needs of all those students. So, recognizing that classroom instruction is pivotal, they then went on to say for students who were still having difficulty, and there will be some, maybe as many as 20-25 percent who are having difficulty with cracking the code of our written language that they need to have immediate interventions.
So, one of the first aspects that they recommended was universal screening for all kindergarten to grade two students. And that is so as soon as students are falling behind on these skills, we identify them and recognize them and get an intervention in place immediately.
The second thing that they recommended were evidence-based interventions. And so, what that means is that you are looking at the same skills that I talked about were going to be happening in the classroom, but the intensity really rises. You are seeing these children in smaller groups. You are giving more explicit instruction, more scaffolded practice so that immediate feedback and guiding of the students on these skills and with much more practice. And that these interventions need to happen on top again of these students getting their good classroom instruction. So, we don't take kids out for an intervention while this classroom instruction is going on.
But we know, and there's a really good chapter by Stephanie Ortega and Joe Torgerson, which is open access, so I will share that with your listeners. They reviewed in 2007 the research on these early interventions in kindergarten and first grade and really found that we could get the number of students struggling down to about three to five percent.
So, the students struggling with these foundational word reading and spelling skills. I think what's important to recognize is that these are interventions for children who are having these difficulties. There will be children who are maybe having broader oral language difficulties. Many of them will need these word reading interventions, but they'll also need something else.
As well, there'll be a smaller group of children who maybe have some language understanding difficulties and not these word reading difficulties, and this wouldn't be the intervention for them. So that's the way that we meet children's needs by using evidence-based approaches.
[00:32:12] Anna Stokke: Now, I have a question about a particular program that I've heard a lot about. Again, I am not a reading expert, but I have heard a lot about this program, Reading Recovery, that is a popular early intervention program used here in Manitoba. And I am wondering if you can say a few words about that.
[00:32:30] Jamie Metsala: So, Reading Recovery is an intervention for first grade students.
And I think it lasts about 12 to 20 weeks, typically, and it's a one-to-one intervention. So, many of, uh, the research studies and programs that I have talked about are small group, whereas Reading Recovery is a one-to-one intervention, which makes it, first of all, very expensive. And I must say that Nova Scotia also still has Reading Recovery for first grade students.
So, it's a multi component program with some of the work focused on words and phonics. However, what researchers over the years have pointed out is that it does not follow the principles of what we have learned from the most effective early reading interventions. And indeed, when there are positive effects, these are often quite small or what we call weak effect sizes.
So, Dr. Timothy Shanahan writes a very accessible blog, and he recently summarized research from a large-scale longitudinal study on reading recovery by a group out of the University of Delaware. And I will quote Dr. Shanahan here in saying that they found that despite positive outcomes at the end of grade one, the Reading Recovery kids had fallen behind comparison kids in third and fourth grade and Shanahan goes on to note that while this was surprising to a lot of the people who had relied on the program for so many years, it was consistent with his conclusions and his colleagues that they had drawn even 27 years ago.
And so, the Ontario Human Rights Commission did not recommend that Reading Recovery or a related intervention called Leveled Literacy Intervention. They recommended that those not be on a list that schools could kind of choose from for evidence-based recommendations. The American Public Media Report put out an article on this study in 2022 as well, which is very accessible.
[00:34:33] Anna Stokke: My question is then, did they quit using Reading Recovery in Ontario?
[00:34:40] Jamie Metsala: That's a question I can't quite answer. I only know that it's, wasn't recommended by the OHRC, and Ontario has done quite a few things to come in line with the, I think, about 157 recommendations of that report. And so, I think that they are maybe currently reviewing effective early interventions as well as later interventions. We need reading interventions for children in grade two all the way through high school to remediate these issues. So, I do believe that Ontario is taking steps in that direction, but that would need to be confirmed.
[00:35:15] Anna Stokke: Okay, so that sounds positive. Now, what were other major areas that the OHRC inquiry made recommendations about?
[00:35:23] Jamie Metsala: So, we have talked about curriculum and instruction in the classroom, screening, as well as early and later interventions. The other areas that the OHRC looked at were preservice preparation for teachers, as well as assessment and identification processes for those who, uh, potentially have learning disabilities or dyslexia or other learning disabilities, and they looked at the use of accommodations in the schools.
So, they really gave quite an overview of all those areas.
[00:35:53] Anna Stokke: It sounds like the report is having an impact in Ontario. I am also curious about the situation in the rest of Canada. This is the Ontario Right to Read Inquiry Report. But kids in Manitoba are no different than those in Ontario. How you learn to read is going to be the same no matter where you live right across Canada, the United States, really anywhere. We are supposed to be getting a Manitoba Right to Read report as well. But in a way, I mean, what difference does it make, right? If they found this in Ontario, it's going to be the same anywhere. I am just wondering about what's going on in the rest of Canada.
[00:36:32] Jamie Metsala: The Ontario Human Rights Commission did work closely with the Ontario Ministry of Education, I think even as the report was coming to its conclusions and before it was put out. And so there have been some really positive changes in Ontario, and that is kindergarten to grade 8 curriculums has changed. I should say kindergarten is undergoing changes right now, but grade 1 to 8 curriculum is new and in line with the report.
So, in terms of the rest of Canada, I think you are exactly right. This report in its comprehensiveness and its clear recommendations has and should have a significant impact across Canada. Children across Canada have a right to read and to the best evidence-based instruction to get them there. Here in Nova Scotia, it's a document that we have used to advocate for changes and our previous Minister of Education put out public communications that we would be following recommendations of the Ontario Right to Read, particularly as they focused on those foundational word reading skills and phonics and phonemic awareness. So, that was a really good step here in Nova Scotia.
As well, Alberta, they really beat the report. Um, they worked closely with Dr. George Giorgio, who is a leading researcher in literacy and literacy instruction, and they changed their curriculum, and I believe their practices. And I think the report was a really nice reinforcement for what they had done. I think as well, there had been some changes in New Brunswick and in PEI around the very early reading pieces.
However, I am not sure that those system level changes came down to really good implementation plans and how well those are being carried out at the ground level, which I must say is true for many provinces. You often see variability between school boards between schools and between the beliefs of leaders.
So, Saskatchewan, as you know, had a Human Rights Commission primarily around Children with reading disabilities and made some of similar recommendations. I am not sure how the changes are going there, but I think, as you say, it's not necessary that every province has a human rights inquiry into how reading is taught. For those provinces that are steeped in balanced literacy, there are more similarities, and the practices are very similar than there are idiosyncrasies.
So, I think using the report to state what the evidence says, what the recommendations are could be very powerful across the country.
[00:39:16] Anna Stokke: What about BC? Do you know anything about BC? Have they done anything?
[00:39:20] Jamie Metsala: I don't think that BC has changed their curriculum, and I am not sure that they are supporting this type of instruction.
However, I know that there was a big announcement recently about funding going into teacher professional development and other aspects of literacy. So hopefully, I just don't know the details. Hopefully that also outlined using evidence-based approaches and support in that way. I must say one of the aspects of the Ontario Human Rights Commission was that the Geoffrey Moore case went to the Supreme Court of Canada.
And they ruled in 2012 that students have a right to the education and special education that they need to learn to read. And Jeffrey Moore and his family, of course, were from BC. So, let's hope that BC has really gotten on board to change, uh, reading instruction.
[00:40:15] Anna Stokke: Yes, and let's hope Manitoba wakes up eventually, too.
And you know what? We need to push these other provinces to wake up and start using evidence-based approaches to teaching reading because, as you say, students have the right to read and the right to learn math. By the way, but we are going to talk about that later in this podcast. So, stick around because I bet Jamie has some good recommendations for advocating.
Now you mentioned that one focus of the OHRC Right to Read Inquiry was preparing preservice teachers in faculties of education concerning reading instruction and reading disabilities. So, what were the findings and recommendations on that?
[00:41:10] Jamie Metsala: So, in order to examine some of what the faculties of education were doing, the primary data source was really course outlines.
So, those course outlines for English language arts or any courses related to reading disabilities, learning disabilities, inclusion, those types of courses. So, you have to recognize that a course outline doesn't tell everything that's going on in a course. Uh, so it's limited in that way. And I think the other thing to recognize is again, you have variability amongst faculties of education.
But in general, uh, what the commission concluded was that there wasn't enough attention in preservice programs given to helping teacher candidates understand how word reading and spelling skills develop, what that acquisition looks like, and importantly, how to teach those skills in an evidence-based manner.
As well, they recommended teaching preservice teachers more about the link between word reading skills and reading comprehension. Because, of course, comprehension is the goal of reading, but you have to understand how the pieces work together, uh, word reading and fluency to get you to that comprehension.
And so that was some of the recommendations to faculties of education.
[00:42:28] Anna Stokke: But this research has been around for a while, and you know, one would think academics should have access to the research, right? So, why do you think the faculties of education have been so resistant to the evidence?
[00:42:42] Jamie Metsala: So, I think that answer to that is quite complex.
So, first of all, of course, the variation. And I, I note that some of our leaders in these changes come from faculties of education. So again, I, thought about, uh, Dr. Shanahan led the national reading report out of a faculty of education. I think he was the dean at the time. You know, I think of people like Karen Harris has really transformed writing instruction and that's from a faculty of education.
So, I think we have to recognize that. But I also think a real complexity is that aspects of a system need to change in tandem. So, it's very problematic if you have a faculty of education teaching English language arts in a way that is not supported by the curriculum. So, I can speak of this firsthand because then you have students saying, but that's not in the curriculum.
You have students saying, but that's not the way the practicum teachers are teaching. You have students that say there's no materials and support to teach that way. And of course, students leave a faculty of education after two years or sometimes after a year. They are quite novice, and they need ongoing support.
They can have some knowledge and some ideas of how to do this, but there needs to be ongoing support from their schools and school boards. And so, if what a faculty of education is teaching is in line with evidence, but not in line with what the rest of a province is doing, uh, that can be complex. So, then I think that the one further issue I'll state is that folks come to a faculty of education with different disciplinary knowledges.
And so, you have the philosophy of education, you have sociology and sociological perspectives of education. Usually not quite as dominant are those psychological foundations of education, but with some of these approaches, there's really a negative outlook on quantitative research and the scientific method.
So, we think that systems are very complex and that boiling them down to the scientific method, it's sometimes argued that those don't apply here or those aren't important or those aren't the evidence that we find that we look to. So, I think all of those reasons together kind of paint a picture why many faculties of education have not changed around those issues we've spoken about today.
[00:45:08] Anna Stokke: So, what you just mentioned there about this negative outlook on quantitative research, to me that sounds like a very convenient way to discount scientific evidence. How do you think teachers perceive the changes that are underway in terms of changing approaches to teaching reading in Ontario or elsewhere?
[00:45:30] Jamie Metsala: So, I think that teachers, I mean, they are just wonderful professionals, and I have really seen grassroots movement towards learning about and trying to implement and trying to advocate for evidence-based approaches. And so, I can just think about the Facebook groups, and there are Canadian Facebook groups, which are called the Science of Reading, What I Should Have Learned in Teachers College.
And so, there's a Canadian one, there's an Ontario one, there's a Nova Scotia one, there's a BC one. I am not sure what other provinces, but for example, there are over 17,000 teachers in Ontario who belong to this Facebook group, and over 5,000 in Nova Scotia, and we have a little province here.
And so, I think that that's one difference now is that teachers are really demanding to be learning about, and to have systems that are supporting the use of evidence-based approaches. Um, I think that teachers are somewhat angry at both faculties of education as well as provincial departments of education or school boards because there's an assumption that policies and practices have been based on evidence.
And so, teachers, uh, have become quickly aware now that that's not the case and they've really got on board to learning a lot more. In Ontario, one thing that the government did was that they funded what’s called onlit.org and it's a website with wonderful resources, which are open to all of us across Canada. And I think this has really been helpful for teachers as well. There's written resources as well as webinars and book groups. And so, it's, excellent for teachers to have a place to go to learn.
And teachers have sought out a lot of training on their own as well, at their own expense, at their own time. So, we really need to support teachers in the teaching profession by putting this in our guidelines, in our policies, and having the professional development time during work time.
[00:47:39] Anna Stokke: Do you think the report will have an influence on preservice teacher education or has it already? has your own faculty of education, for instance, changed its approach to teacher training?
[00:47:52] Jamie Metsala: So, I think because of what I just spoke about that grassroots movement, I think that we are much more likely to see faculties of education changing.
I think another key change is that in places like Ontario, Nova Scotia, Alberta, the curriculum has changed. And so, I think that also puts pressure on faculties of education to teach in a way consistent with what is expected in our schools and our education system. Here at Mount St. Vincent University, we've been gearing up for changes for some time and that's really come in the form of bringing on faculty who teach in this way, are familiar with and study the evidence base around teaching students how to read.
And so, our preservice teachers get two courses, one their first year, one their second year in English Language Arts, and those are now taught by faculty members who teach them about language acquisition and reading acquisition as well as evidence-based ways of teaching these. So, I think that's been a really good change here, as well we have a graduate diploma, an M. Ed in literacy, which we have always had, but we have also added a cohort which focuses on the science of reading. And so, we had our first intake in, uh, September, this past September, and they are wonderful, dedicated teachers were reading the research together in all aspects of English language arts instruction.
So, both these foundational word reading and spelling skills and fluency, as well as vocabulary, how do we integrate that with content area instruction so that we are using cognitive strategies to learn about science and social studies. Children are building knowledge so that they can go on the next year to read the more difficult texts and textbooks.
And so, I am really excited. We have two new cohorts coming in next September. So, it's been active and busy here and going in a really good direction, I think, at Mount St. Vincent University. And you have seen programs like this as well across the country. So, a shout out to MUN who has had a program focused on evidence-based instruction as well a certificate program at the University of Alberta by Dr. Leslie Wade Woolley. And so, I think you are seeing changes in both in service education as well as preservice.
[00:50:25] Anna Stokke: Despite evidence supporting structured literacy, many Canadian school systems still resist change. Why do you think this is?
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[00:50:34] Jamie Metsala: I think, again, that would be a very complex answer, so I will just give it in a nutshell. I think that balanced literacy and its predecessor, whole language, have really been dominant for so long.
And so, I think that the people that we have in these leadership positions, one, they may really believe that balanced literacy is what the students need. And so, in that way, it can be hard to lead a change that you don't really believe in. But two, I think that also the knowledge and expertise, that doesn't just change on a dime.
I mean, its English language arts is a complex area to teach, uh, so we need leaders who are knowledgeable. In the Ontario Human Rights Commission report sometimes when they put their recommendations, they'll often say to work with an external expert, really helping give educational system support on making these changes, the knowledge that's needed to, you know, help guide these changes. So, I think that those are some of the reasons why there's not the change we'd like to see, or definitely systems are very complex implementation plans need to be made and then they need to be overseen to really get changes at the ground level.
[00:51:52] Anna Stokke: So, this brings to mind some criticisms of structured literacy that seem to pop up frequently.
And one is that this is a one size fits all approach. And how can that work when all students learn differently, supposedly?
[00:52:06] Jamie Metsala: Well, that's an interesting question, and we do hear that a lot. So, one difficulty is, I think it's just false that all students learn differently. And all students need to learn the same written code, whether they are learning it in French or in English, then it's different, but otherwise we need to learn to become accurate and automatic at learning those words, and there aren't, unfortunately, a lot of different ways into learning that.
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And so, there's more similarities amongst how students learn and what they need to learn than there are differences. Secondly, I get kind of angry when I hear that all students learn differently because I think that's really been a burden that we have placed on teachers. Just think about it, you have 25 to 30 students in front of you and they all learn differently. That's overwhelming just to think about, never mind to go in. day to day to teach English language arts and math and science, every child learns differently.
So, one, our cognitive systems are more alike than they are different, and two, it would be impossible. And I think also related is that we know learning styles is often brought in when you heard this argument about everyone learns differently and learning styles are really a myth that have been disproven.
So, it's really time to let that go. But maybe even more importantly is that using a multi tiered systems of support focused on evidence-based approaches really allows us to meet the needs of individual students. And so, we are teaching students in the best possible way, but then as students, as soon as students are having difficulty, we are upping the intensity. Sometimes it's a small group within the classroom. But more often, it's that tier two intervention. So, we are getting students, and we are focusing on them, giving them individualized feedback, scaffolded practice and support.
And then for students who are still struggling, there is a higher tier, which might be individualized or smaller group and more intense. And multi tiered systems of support really gives us more chances to address individual needs well. Then, just the notion that everyone in the classroom learns differently, and so we can't really have an evidence-based approach to teaching.
[00:54:20] Anna Stokke: In the Maclean's article, you said that the enjoyment of reading leads to more reading, but that only happens when instruction is effective.
Now, I have also heard it said that the type of approach you are talking about won't instill a love of reading. We have sort of a similar thing going on in math that, uh, systematic instruction and practice is, takes the fun out of it and students won't like math if it's done that way. They won't be engaged, blah, blah, blah.
So, I am hearing something similar about reading. What did you mean when you said that and what does research say on this issue?
[00:54:59] Jamie Metsala: I think one of the aspects of research that bears on this issue is that self efficacy is a large part of motivation for everyone. But when you look at young students, it's particularly important.
If we teach in a way that students can see that they are learning that they are keeping pace with their peers, that they are able to read, and that's quite an exciting moment, and development, then there is more motivation, more joy of reading. When we are good at something, we enjoy doing it and we engage in it more. So that's one aspect of it. And really, we talked about the Matthew effects and the importance of that early decoding, reading in order to be able to read more and to enjoy reading.
As soon as kids are cut off and can't be good readers, that they see that they are falling behind, that has devastating impact on their enjoyment of reading. So, even kids who might have loved to hear stories, the teacher read alouds, the parent read alouds, and see the benefit in books, when they can't actually pick up the books and read them, they see that their classmates are able to, that really cuts down on any enjoyment that reading can give.
And research has shown, I am thinking of a 2007 kind of review of the research by Doug Fuchs and his colleagues, really has shown that there's bidirectional relationships, not surprisingly, between kind of motivation for reading and skills.
So, the better your skills are, the more motivated you are to read as well. Those reading motivations help you increase your skills because you are reading more. So, I think we need to recognize that getting young children off on a good trajectory or helping those children who have dyslexia or reading disabilities, who we didn't get to early, remediating those issues, are really a large part of helping instill the love and enjoyment of reading.
And I would also add that most of us grow up and we need to read and write and communicate as well as have mathematical skills in our workplaces. And so, we need to think about achievement as well as enjoyment and a love of these endeavors.
[00:57:16] Anna Stokke: So, your article points out that assessments haven't caught up with curriculum changes.
Can you elaborate on that?
[00:57:24] Jamie Metsala: So, for years, how we have assessed children is using, uh, leveled reading assessment systems. And I think a previous guest that you had on, Dr. Burns, talked about these and some of the research he did, because if we are using them as screening assessments, he pointed out that the accuracy could be the same by flipping a coin.
So, they are really not good in terms of catching children who need tier two instruction. The other difficulty with these assessments is that they are really looking at how children are able to use the three queuing systems, especially for those very young children who are in those pattern predictable books.
So, in that way, when we require teachers to give their data to boards of education or ministries of education, looking at students leveled reading book assessments, they are out of sync with a curriculum that's focusing on developing these early word reading and spelling issues and reading fluently.
And so that's a real problem. It puts teachers, you know, really in this no-win situation because one, their data isn't going to look very good. They are not teaching children how to use different cues to guess at words. And two, they are not getting an accurate assessment of how they are teaching their class, what they need to change, how students are doing.
So it is, uh, very problematic when the assessment system is not caught up to how we expect teachers to be teaching.
[00:58:52] Anna Stokke: What kind of professional development do you think could support teachers to successfully implement effective literacy instruction?
[00:59:00] Jamie Metsala: I think successful professional development really needs to be multi pronged and that is we need to think about the delivery models and so we are not just bringing teachers together for a half day or a day telling them what to do and sending them out.
Really, I think, um, some research has shown that professional learning communities that are supported with the knowledge and expertise and with ongoing coaching and mentoring. So, teachers are answering the questions that they want to answer, they are learning about things that they know are important to their students, they are learning why this type of instruction works, they are learning how to implement the instruction and respond to the needs of their students, and they are being supported until they are feeling comfortable and good at that type of instruction.
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And so again, I think it takes giving teachers time to work with each other, to use resources and this all comes with a financial cost, of course, for that professional development time. I think school boards across the country have really become even more strapped in terms of professional development time.
So, for example, here in Nova Scotia, it's very hard to get the number of a substitute teachers you would need in order to have other teachers out going through this professional development. So, I think there are a lot of constraints and difficulties, but unless we give the teachers the professional development, they need and the resources they need and the ongoing coaching they need, we can't expect these changes to happen, and to happen effectively throughout the system.
[01:00:43] Anna Stokke: What are some of the long-term consequences for students who don't receive effective early instruction in foundational reading skills?
[01:00:51] Jamie Metsala: We have talked about the impact on academic success, and we know that, that is significant. But there are also other areas, uh, that are impacted, and that is students, uh, social emotional development.
So, for children who find themselves unable to read, they feel like they are failing daily on their major, kind of activity that they are doing in school. And this leads to very low self esteem, self concept, and it's heartbreaking for parents to watch that. I mean, parents are upset that their students can't read and then they really get emotional when they see that their student's self concept is really plummeting.
The other aspects of that are that these turn into internalizing problems or disorders like anxiety and depression, as well or externalizing difficulties. So behavioral issues, you know, if you can't be successful and engaged daily in school, it's not far fetched to think that you would develop disruptive behavior.
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And so those are some of the long-term consequences. We also know that there are societal consequences. This is very costly for a society, uh, for a workforce. So those issues are all really important. We know that literacy is a social determinant of health. And so, there are long term health consequences.
So, all of those are really important issues that if we think about how do we teach best in the classroom, how do we put effective tiered interventions in place, we can really prevent this cascading nature of these difficulties.
[01:02:32] Anna Stokke: Absolutely. And also, just students having options in the future, right? Being able to access careers, right? We want doors to be open to students and not close to them early on. In math, that certainly happens a lot.
So, for instance, any career in the sciences or you know, economics, engineering, technology, data science, AI, they all rely on a really strong math background. And my feeling is that a lot of students are getting shut out very early on because they are not getting those foundational skills that would set them up for success later.
So, let's talk about parents and some parents obviously have looked elsewhere and they have had to engage tutors for their own child. Was that recognized in the inquiry report? And what are the consequences of that?
[01:03:27] Jamie Metsala: So that was a significant area of concern in the Right to Read report. Parents are paying a lot of attention money for individual psychoeducational assessments, as well as then for the recommended individual tutors or tutoring centers. And that gets very costly in terms of finances. It's also very stressful in terms of getting students to where they need to be after school, and maybe even taking the place of those activities that students want to be engaged in.
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So, think of it, you are struggling all day at school to engage in these activities, and then you are being taken to tutoring in these activities in evening. Now, mind you, tutoring usually has the effect of helping these skills so students feel good, but still, it's a very tiring day, and then more of it, uh, evenings or weekends.
And so, that was a very big concern. There were town hall meetings where both students and parents spoke. And so, the OHRC heard a lot of stories about these impacts. I think what we have to recognize as well, and that the report did, is this really creates a two-tier system. And so those parents who have the economic resources, who maybe don't live in a rural area because it can be difficult to even get to the resources, and who have the time to be able to get their children to these programs can do that.
Where many other parents, whether they be trying to make ends meet or they can't get to the resources, can't get that for their students, as well as many parents hear from the school system that we are doing as much as possible for your student. And that we are using programs that have been found to be effective programs and approaches.
And so sometimes, uh, parents believe that the difficulty is located solely in their child, that it's really not interacting with the types of instruction. And so, you get, again, this two-tier system of education where those who have the resources get the education for their children that they need, and many others just do not get the education that they need.
And I happen to think that teaching students to read is something that we need to do in schools. And I know teachers are on board for that. And so now systems need to change to really use that best evidence so that all children have the right to read and that we are opening rather than shutting doors so early for some.
[01:05:59] Anna Stokke: Absolutely.
This is Canada. It's the responsibility of the government to educate the child. I mean, parents should be supportive. They should be supportive of their child's teacher and helping as much as they can. But we do have a system in which we do expect that the schools are going to teach children to read and do math and all those things. In order to do that, we have to be using effective instruction, which is what we are talking about today. We talked about the situation across Canada and obviously some provinces are making some changes, and some provinces seem to be slow on that. And maybe people have to advocate to get some of these provinces moving.
So, what advice do you have for advocates in provinces like mine, Manitoba?
[01:06:50] Jamie Metsala: So, I do have some experience with advocating, and I am very grateful to our IWK Children's Hospital Advisory Board because they did recommend to me to do something that's done in medicine. And this is what they called a very short, you know, one-to-three-page S-BAR statement.
And what that means is you write a statement as a structured communication tool that lays out what the situation is, the background, uh, critical information, the assessment of the problem, and then the recommendations. And I wrote a two-to-three-page statement on the right to read in Nova Scotia, and it very closely monitored those key recommendations from the Ontario Human Right to Read Commission and used that as one source of information for advocating.
So, I think what that could help do is help all those who are advocating in your province kind of get on the same page in what is it that our absolutely necessary that we need to see happen and to use that to get it in the hands of the premier of the Minister of Education and to everyone from there down.
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So, I think that's maybe a tool that could be used. I think if possible, involving the Human Rights Commission or even having the Ontario Human Rights commissioners who led this inquiry were wonderful. They could come and talk to leaders in Manitoba. I would really recommend that. Strong parent advocacy groups, you know, were so pivotal in Ontario.
And I must say here, we had Everyone Reads Nova Scotia, which was led by passionate parents who then were forced to become very knowledgeable about this area. And they had a series of meetings with, um, folks at our Department of Education and Early Childhood Development to really let their concerns be known, let it be known kind of what they were finding were needed for children with reading difficulties as well.
They really advocated for system level changes in the classroom. They knew that a lot of these difficulties could have been prevented. So that parent advocacy piece coming on the same page is important. And then I guess the flip side of this is not to give up. I think being relentless, hanging in there even when it seems hopeless, I think would be one piece of advice that I am sure parent advocacy groups as well as, uh, researchers who have been advocating for this would all say, you really have to stick in there for the long haul.
And that just brings to mind that in 1995, I was at the University of Maryland, and I wrote an invited article for the Boston Globe, and it was really not to undervalue the role of phonics in reading instruction. So, I feel like I am a little bit of a relic in this field now, but it really does illustrate just the length of the fight to get to these changes that we are seeing in curriculum and other important related changes.
[01:09:53] Anna Stokke: That's really helpful advice, and I think we can take some of that for math, too. Yeah, I take your point about sticking with it, and I would say even stick with it, even if your child gets through school. I started advocating for better math instruction when my kids were actually in elementary school, and now my kids are both in university, and I think people thought I would kind of go away.
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But I am not going anywhere. So, I think that's really important that we need to keep at it no matter what because this is a societal issue, and we need to care as a society about children getting a good education. It certainly can be hard to convince people to change their mind sometimes when their salary depends on it or when their identity depends on it.
You know, we have to keep at it, and we certainly will. We should end on a positive note. Because you actually expressed optimism in the Maclean's article, that the weight of evidence will eventually force widespread adoption of structured literacy. So, what signs do you see that change is happening?
[01:11:04] Jamie Metsala: I am more optimistic now than I have ever been.
And I think there are really a couple critical aspects that we have talked about. And that first one is that there have been changes in the curriculum in several provinces. I know a lot of people say, well, in education you get this pendulum swing, but really that balanced literacy and whole language curriculum has not swung for many, many years.
And so, I think that these changes are becoming embedded in the curriculum is key. Curriculum, it will really inform the materials that we buy, the assessments that we do, the support that we give teachers as well as our preservice teacher education needs to inform that as well. And the second reason is because I have seen so many strengths in our teachers in this province, but also across the country.
And teachers are out there working every day to teach kids to the best of, of their abilities. And so, we really need to not fail our students, and we need to not fail our teachers as they have this grassroots movement, as they have the dedication and the energy, let's put the systems in place to support them.
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And so, between curriculum change, our wonderful teachers. And just my need to see every child learn to read, and I agree with you 100%, Anna, that mathematics is equally important, and that we need to transform how we teach mathematics because we are closing too many doors. Let's take that on as well, and let's do what's best for all children, not just our own children.
[01:12:47] Anna Stokke: So, do you think we can get a human rights inquiry for math?
[01:12:47] Jamie Metsala: I think you probably could, it's certainly so important and I might start out with this small S-BAR system though. There's so much right now in terms of the science and math and so much agreement in the science of learning about how this needs to be taught and how math, uh, develops and that cumulative nature and the need to, for early automaticity in math facts and math procedures that I really think if you kind of solidify some of that in a clear statement, even take that to the Human Rights Commission to, to get this going. But I certainly wish you all the luck in that because it's critically important for all our students.
[01:13:34] Anna Stokke: I want to thank you so much for all you do to get children reading and get the message out there that every child has a right to read.
I want to thank you so much for everything you are doing and all the work you do. And it's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you today.
[01:13:50] Jamie Metsala: Well, thank you so much for having me. And, um, maybe we can finish by just thanking all the wonderful advocacy groups across the country, because this is really happening due to parents and teachers all working together.
So, I am a very small part, and I am happy at times to be the voice for those groups. So, thank you so much for having me.
[01:14:20] Anna Stokke: As always, we have included a resource page that has links to articles and books mentioned in the episode. If you enjoy this podcast, please consider showing your support by leaving a five-star review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Chalk and Talk is produced by me, Anna Stokke. Transcript and resource page by Jazmin Boisclair and Deepika Tung.
Subscribe on your favorite podcast app to get new episodes delivered as they become available. You can follow me on X, Blue Sky, or LinkedIn for notifications, or check out my website, www.annastokke.com for more information. This podcast received funding through a University of Winnipeg Knowledge Mobilization and Community Impact grant funded through the Anthony Swaity Knowledge Impact Fund.