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What does it take to build confident readers? Just ask educators at Baltimore City Public Schools, where students are outpacing the rest of the state in English Language Arts thanks to a focus on literacy instruction and intensive professional development. In part two of our series on literacy, Gloria dives into how BCPS is engaging diverse, multilingual learners with Dr. Joan Dabrowski, Chief Academic Officer at BCPS, and Olia Hardy, Principal of William Paca Elementary.

This episode is created in partnership with the Schusterman Family Philanthropies. Thank you to Baltimore City Public Schools for making this conversation possible.

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Olia Hardy, Joan Dabrowski, Gloria Riviera

Gloria Riviera  01:16

Hello and welcome to Good Things. I’m your host, Gloria Rivera. Today we’re diving into the groundbreaking work being done by Baltimore City Public Schools in literacy education. We’ll be joined by Dr Joan Dabrowski, Chief Academic Officer at BCPS, and Olia Hardy, principal of William PACA elementary we’re going to talk about how BCPS is leading the charge in literacy instruction, focusing on knowledge building and intensive professional development. Plus we’ll explore how their approach is about so much more than just sounding out words. We’re talking about social equity and empowering diverse learners. That’s a lot of good things happening. I’m so excited to bring you this conversation with Joan and Olia. Joan and Olia, thank you so much for joining us on Good Things. It’s so good to see you both, and we can just get right into it. This is what I like to call an off piece question, but one that’s close to my heart. Last night, my daughter was writing, she’s nine. She’s in fourth grade in the public school system here in Washington, DC, writing about one of her favorite books. And she wrote about The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein, which is a very simple book, and we’ve read it over and over to her, and then as she learned to read, she would read it to us, and it’s a book that’s close to all of our hearts. So I want to start with that question, Joan and Olia, both of you, what is a book that still resonates with you, a book that you would have read as a young child? And why, Joan, you can start.

 

Joan Dabrowski  02:58

Oh, that’s a great question. I think about as as a small, small child. There was a book called, Are you my mother? And it was about a little bird trying to find their mother, who somehow got lost and sort of got pushed out of the nest and goes through sort of the community and sees different things. And it’s a ship, it’s a dog, it’s and it’s the question, Are you my mother? And this idea of trying to find home, finding a mom, and that just is one that just always warms my heart, but I also have to signal another one, which was Diary of Anne Frank, much older in my childhood, but still a powerful book of story and humanity is one that resonates with me and how a book can open up a world to you that I knew so little about through the story of Anne Frank.

 

Gloria Riviera  03:42

Oh, those are such beautiful books, both of them and Olia, you growing up in Russia, what were some children’s books that resonated with you?

 

Olia Hardy  03:51

So one of the beloved books that resonates with me deeply, and actually many children in Russia that I remember growing up with is called The Little Prince. It’s by Antoine de Saint Exupery, who’s French, which has been really widely popular across the culture of Negro in albatross in every library. So what really captivated my heart in this book is that the mix of wimps and depths like the story theme of friendship, love, responsibility and the search for meaning, make it universal, be relatable. So it really speaks, speaks to both children and adults. I bring up this book in my conversations even now, because while Little Prince was traveling from planet to planet that been my life, traveling countries and cultures and meeting people from all over the world.

 

Gloria Riviera  04:41

I love the little prince. I love it. I read it when I was studying French, and I often return to this sort of idealistic fantasy world in which all adults simply had a breakdown of the lessons that children’s literature teaches us. All right, love, kindness. Respect. Sometimes we just need those reminders, don’t we?

 

Gloria Riviera  05:04

Absolutely.

 

Olia Hardy  05:05

I’d like to move to how you both define the word literacy. What does it mean to you? Joan,

 

Joan Dabrowski  05:12

So for me, literacy, in the broadest sense, is the space where we promote thinking, speaking, listening, reading, writing, in a space that allows for critical ideas to be considered by humans. When we allow for students to experience that rich literacy, we’re providing them with the tools to navigate the world around them, and we’re giving them power, power to access information, make decisions, be in conversations, providing access, giving freedom, but at a very broad sense, it’s it’s more than just reading, if you will, because it’s that space of thinking and being able to Look at text, think about it, hear text from others, and be in conversation. All of that builds what I would say is literacy.

 

06:07

Right? And I love this idea you said, it allows critical ideas to be experienced by humans, right? Absolutely, it’s everything, right? It’s the beginning of everything. Let’s go a little bit closer into where you both are, and I would love to hear how you feel Baltimore itself, and the students, the families that you interact with, what’s unique about them?

 

Joan Dabrowski  06:31

As much as I see the every space where I have had the privilege of working, there’s a unique space. There are so many things that are in common. So I almost want to start with, we have a community filled with hard working families and children coming into our schools who are excited to be learners and wanting to ask questions and learn and be part of community, and so much of that, I think, Is true wherever one resides the space of adults being caregivers and adults bringing their children to schools with trust and confidence that schools are going to support their children and their development. So I think that there’s a sameness. There’s also, though, some unique spaces. Baltimore is a changing city. We are seeing some of the fastest growing population shifts in our area of multilingual learners. So it’s an exciting time to be in Baltimore as demographics are shifting. I think historically, Baltimore has been considered sort of a black and white city, and it is much more a city of black, brown, white and a level of diversity that is expanding at very fast rates. And I think for us, it’s inviting new opportunities to think about language development that is really exciting. So there’s, I think, that unique. And if we look across cities in the United States, Baltimore is one of the fastest growing in that space of multilingual learners.

 

Gloria Riviera  07:58

And Olia, I know that you were, are a multilingual learner, and you’re helping a lot of students in that same position. I also know that BCPS is outpacing the rest of the state when it comes to success in ELA. So it’s so fascinating to me that a spot with so many challenges is rising so quickly in terms of the data that reflects success, what are you doing? Specifically, Olia, for those multilingual learners to achieve literacy that’s enabling them to gain power.

 

Olia Hardy  08:33

I really love what I do because I am forever multilingual learner. Today, there are still things that come across that I do not know, and I have to navigate it in conversations. So we have the whole child approach to education of all students and multilingual learners, like Joan said, is a very growing population very fast that we have welcomed in our school and completely revamped the way of teaching and learning. So our multilingual learners come from different countries. Majority of them are Spanish speaking countries and in every grade, because when the family chooses to immigrate to United States, they have children of different ages. When it comes to multilingual learners, what’s important is to recognize that to be literate in your language really is aligned to become literate in any other language. That means that our library is infused with a lot of books in different languages. That means that if we are assessing our students in their home language to see their baseline of knowledge, so we can develop a plan. Every student has a developmental plan and a goal for each school year where would like them to see, not only with perspective of how well are they reading? Are they perfect? For this grade level, how well are they writing? But it also involves the experiences that we must know to see where they are.

 

Gloria Riviera  10:09

We’re going to take a quick break, but we will be right back with more on Good Things.

 

Gloria Riviera  10:14

I love hearing about how BCPS is meeting multilingual learners where they are in their first language. Joan, is that a change to how things have traditionally been done at BCPS? Or has that? How long has that been in place, that approach?

 

Joan Dabrowski  12:30

So I think there has always been a commitment to support multilingual learners. I think what only is lifting up is because we are seeing more and more of these students coming to us each year, we’ve had to think in sort of a systems way about how we’re ensuring, as Olia is doing in her building, how we’re providing these for all of our schools and opportunities to make sure we have English language development support staff and in all of our schools, making sure that We are thinking about assessments and all of our communications with respect to a multilingual learner and their family. So I think while it’s been there at a very child level, we are now having to move to systems level work because the sheer volume of students is changing.

 

Gloria Riviera  13:16

Right, I mean, what comes to my mind when I hear you explain that is that BCPS is meeting the community where it is, and there are a lot of exciting things happening. Yeah, you’re nodding your head.

 

Joan Dabrowski  13:26

Yes.

 

Gloria Riviera  13:27

Olia, can you share with me some of your reflections on what it was like to be a multilingual learner and how that shows up in the classroom for you? Does it ever become personal for you, and where do you hold that as you’re doing your job?

 

Olia Hardy  13:43

It’s personal for me every day, because I want to create the environment of learning for children, wooden Park Elementary. That is everything I wish I had when I came here as a student, because when coming here as a student at a young age was quite challenging. It was not necessarily as well known and developed System of Supports in schools and colleges. So for me, it went to retake some classes over and over to just pass the assessment, because you do not have any access to a glossary, or any kind of accommodations of extra time, to give you an example and be very vulnerable, speeding it up to me taking the islich test to become a principal. I had to take that test three times. Do you know why? Because I kept running out of time, and on the third time, the lady who just takes your ticket and shows you where to go, stopped me and said, I see you here a lot. You look like a nice, smart lady. What’s going on? I talked to her, and she said, Well, you have an accent. Have you ever applied for an accommodation? She blew my mind. I didn’t know there is an accommodation. For extra time for if you’re taking this test in the other language than your first native tongue. That blew my mind, and this is exactly what I’m talking about, to provide our not just our students, but our student families that coming from other countries and establish their life new life here in United States of America, to give them the resources and make sure that they’re aware of all of those great things available to them, because you don’t know what you don’t know, right, right? So I never asked. So in my school, where the population of multilingual learners is so high, I have one in some grade levels, two English language development teachers to support general education teachers in the classroom.

 

Gloria Riviera  15:45

I love that idea that you’re looking to provide the things you did not have. So my question Joan is, I love the way Olea has described the multilingual help kids are getting. And I love also the idea that we can ask for help we may not even know exists beyond that. How is BCPS helping students, including economically disadvantaged students, students of color? What does it look like beyond the language?

 

Joan Dabrowski  16:14

So I think one of the things that we’ve done here in Baltimore City is we have thought about providing a rich set of learning opportunities. So sometimes you run the risk in a district that is chasing test scores that you’re going to be thinking just about English, language arts and mathematics, and you narrow your curriculum. And I think what we’re trying to do here in city schools is think about where and how our children can experience fine arts instruction? Where can they experience opportunities to be in a club or to be in sports at starting at the younger grade, starting in fourth and fifth and middle school, having robust opportunities for athletics, robotics, things like that that allow students to be excited to come to school sometimes there. I think we saw this after the pandemic. The engagement piece was really important students wanting to find a reason to feel connected to their school. So I think we’ve done a tremendous job investing in those types of opportunities, both after school and in our summer. Over the last three years, we have grown exponentially in the types of offerings that we have during the summer for our students from dance and music and robotics and then certainly intentional work to support that area of literacy and mathematics. So we couple these things together, rather than saying it’s either or, and I think that’s something that all students benefit from, but particularly students who may not have those opportunities outside of school. It is absolutely essential.

 

Gloria Riviera  17:44

And what I’m thinking when I hear you speak is that it’s an approach to the whole child, right? It’s not just the literacy, although that is what we’re here to talk about today, literacy and readiness. So what steps or changes, initiatives Did you see be effective, and how will you build on those going forward?

 

Olia Hardy  18:05

There are so many different strategies that we’re doing now that we didn’t do before. I think as the research coming out, a big part of it was the science of reading that came out couple of years ago, and it was a huge eye opening to all of us in the educational field. So there’s a lot of accolades that goes to our pre kindergarten team for creating the environment for learning and making sure children have access to necessary tools to be successful. What comes to mind right away is the monthly parent workshops, where we invite all of the parents to the class, and they do activities together with the students, and they come, yes, and they all come. And let me tell you something, you know, I don’t know you. What you might hear about Baltimore, every single parent in pre kindergarten comes.

 

Gloria Riviera  18:53

Wow, in pre kindergarten comes as well. That’s amazing, that’s to me, wow. That’s a big change.

 

Olia Hardy  19:00

Yeah, so doing those things together, having bilingual staff, of course, plays a major role, and we have a very large support from like I mentioned, ELD, the English language development teachers, but we also have positions that are called para educators. Those are the bilingual para educators, like per se assistance to instruction that speak more than one language, and in my case, majority of multilingual learners are Spanish speaking, so we have a lot of additional supports with multilingual speakers working here at the school, all communication goes out home to all grade levels in all languages, whether it’s our flyers, whether it’s the robo call, making an announcement, everything is bilingual all the time.

 

19:48

What I’m hearing is that you’re building community outside of the school to work with the school, right? And that must be incredibly appreciated. I know the schools also approach professional development. Joan in literacy instruction. What does that look like in terms of what exists now versus five years ago, 10 years ago? What’s new?

 

Joan Dabrowski  20:09

Yeah, so one of the benefits that cities, Baltimore City Schools, has is that we’ve had a long standing Chief Executive Officer, so Dr, Sonia santelises, who’s now in her ninth year here in city schools, early on, when she came in, she put sort of the stake in the ground about focus on literacy, and one of the first things she did was to recognize the importance of professional learning for teachers at the schoolhouse. So having a full time support, which we call a literacy coach, in a school to really support side by side conversations with teachers, helping them plan lessons, giving them feedback on how instructions going early on, she put those positions into play, and we started small. We started with a group of, say, 2030, schools, and watched the data to see was this making a difference. So we certainly do system wide professional development, where all teachers come out and get training and development. We do a special round of support for our newest educators, so that they’re supported, especially in those early career years. But the intentional work of having these coaches in schools was something that we noticed was having an impact. And as we watch that data, we knew we wanted to expand. And so now we have coaches in all of our schools, which is a phenomenal space to be in, and we bring them out for regular training. They work over the summer to get more and they really do serve as the expert there at the school, because we know, in a large system, central offices can be feel very far away, but if you know you have that coach right around the corner on the hall, down the hall, that you can ask that question, it is such a powerful opportunity for real time development for teachers, and we do see the benefits of those investments paying off.

 

Gloria Riviera  21:55

That all sounds incredible. I mean, it sounds incredible to be in my job and know that I have full time support, as you said down the hall, that to have that where it did not exist before I can just imagine how appreciated that is. Okay, sit tight, everyone. We’re going to take one more quick break, and we’ll be right back with more Good Things.

 

Gloria Riviera  22:34

Joan, I know that you’ve talked about literacy is not just about coming back in to the classroom and saying. Saying, oh my gosh, this is what happened in my book. It’s about so much more. Can you talk about what more there is to foundational literacy and fluency?

 

Joan Dabrowski  25:11

There is so when we give students these tools to be able to read and understand text and then make connections in their lives to things that they never knew about or things that they want to know more about. I mean, it just opens doors. And I think when we invest in this work well and see these bright lights going on for children at a systems level, I do believe that we are setting up the world to be a better place because we are doing what we need to do, which is preparing young people to be in their towns and their cities as productive citizens who contribute and lead. And I think that, to me, is watching that at a first grade or a sixth grader or a 10th grader, that’s where literacy is such a powerful vehicle for these opportunities, choices and ultimately, freedoms, right?

 

Gloria Riviera  26:04

It makes me think of what you said at the beginning of this conversation, which was that critical ideas can be experienced by humans with fluent literacy, and you can do anything if you experience a critical idea, really experience it fully. I want to ask you both when you think about what has led to success in your own district, in your own school. Are there ways in which you think other districts, other schools, might similarly benefit, like, what could work there if it’s worked for you? Or is every community so vastly different? Joan, you spoke about how multilingual Baltimore is today. So are there things that you think other people might want to take a look at for their own schools?

 

Joan Dabrowski  26:49

I do. I think there certainly are unique contexts always play into decisions we make. However this piece, I think that strategic ways that your teachers are meeting together, regularly looking at student data and making decisions to how you’re going to teach the next day based on what you’re seeing in a child’s last data assessment that they had. I think that’s something that we should be doing all the time, because the great thing is we get a lot of data now we have wonderful assessments that give us so much information about where children are and what their needs are, but we need to make sure we have time and place for our teachers to be together, to look at that data and make good decisions based on it. I also think this literacy coach, this having somebody in our schools is something that will benefit no matter where you are in, whatever district you’re in. So I do think, for me, it is making sure you’ve got strong systems at the school level with a passionate leader, like with Olia, and then also, again, investing in some of those key positions to make sure teachers are getting that support and development throughout their school year, right.

 

Gloria Riviera  27:55

And I know a lot of educators will be listening to this episode, but I also know a lot of families will be listening and wondering what they can do. What have you seen be most effective for families?

 

Joan Dabrowski  28:07

So we do a great job here in city schools asking our families how things are going for them, what works for them, what’s the best way? A couple things we’ve learned. They really, really value that parent teacher conference, the opportunity to sit with their child’s teacher and really learn. They want to understand the data. They want to know which assessments. And I think allowing parents to come in as partners is something that we really pride ourselves in in Baltimore, and believe that we have to do this work together. So for parents reaching out and engaging with your child’s teacher and asking those questions is something I always say that is the most important thing you can do early on in the school year. Is, how can I help at home? What are the things I should and also, what are the things I shouldn’t do when I’m trying to help with homework or not help with homework? I think where we can engage families as partners, that is a winning partnership.

 

Gloria Riviera  29:00

Right, Olia for you. If there was one thing you could snap your fingers and solve in literacy education overnight, what would it be and why?

 

Olia Hardy  29:10

Oh, I wish that every single teacher in every school would start a journey with engaging in the professional development and learning about the science of reading, that would be my choice, because that is a huge eye opener, and it’s a change to how we teach and how we’ll look at pedagogy of development, of student learning to make sure that all kids are successful. It’s a strategy that seems so simple now, yet took such a long journey to discover.

 

Gloria Riviera  29:42

Right, and as you say that, I think about my own daughter, who just started fourth grade. She turned nine in July, and at the start of third grade, some parents had been talking about reading, reading, reading, and I think they were talking about this latest data, because when I asked. Teacher, what is your approach to teaching literacy? The sense was, this is a heated topic. There’s a lot of discussion here. I still don’t understand it fully, because I am not an educator, and we do a lot of reading in our house, and she likes to read, but I just wonder how you have handled that as principal? Has there been a lot of dust to settle after the science of reading data came out?

 

Olia Hardy  30:31

You know what? Actually, it was very, very successful experience in my school. Baltimore City schools opened up professional development for teachers around signs of reading and literacy coaches and everyone else who was signing up in the summer, I offered to pay stipends to all of my teachers who will be willing to go, and strongly encourage my literacy coaches and everyone on my immediate team of instructional leadership team to attend so we can actually engage in professional development and develop the next steps how we’re going to approach literacy moving forward. Now, I can tell you that every teacher at my school who is year two or more has been trained on science of reading, because that is the prerequisite knowledge that they must have in order to engage in the work that we do here.

 

Gloria Riviera  31:22

So everybody’s on the same page, which must be quite a relief. And Joan, do you have any wish list, magical wave of wand, things that you’d like to see happen?

 

Joan Dabrowski  31:33

I think I’ll echo a little bit of what Olia said, which is, I think what we’ve learned over decades and decades of thinking about reading is that there is complexity to it, and so the adults who are charged with teaching children to read need to know and understand the research. Need to be able to make these strategic in the moment decisions. The work is hard and the work takes time, and sometimes I wish we could just move it faster, because children only get one chance to be in first grade, and so I want that to be the very best first grade that we can give them. So I think it is the giving that capacity to our teachers to do this work well.

 

Gloria Riviera  32:13

Well, even after 30 plus years, Joan, I think you need to stick around a little bit longer, we need people like you in positions of support and encouragement. Olia, the same goes for you. So I hope neither one of you are leaving anytime soon, and I want to thank you so much for the work that you do and the children that you teach and the families and communities that you support. So thank you so much.

 

Olia Hardy  32:35

Thank you.

 

Joan Dabrowski  32:35

Thank you.

 

Gloria Riviera  32:36

Thank you for listening to Good Things. This episode is created in partnership with the Schusterman family philanthropies. I’m your host, Gloria Riviera. Thank you to Baltimore City Public Schools for making this conversation possible.

 

CREDITS  33:00

This series is produced by Lisa Phu, and Hannah Boomershine. Our supervising producer is Muna Danish, mixing and Sound Design by Noah Smith. Steve Nelson is our SVP of weekly content. Executive Producers are Stephanie Wittels Wachs, and Jessica Cordova Kramer. Help others find our show by leaving us a rating and writing a review. Thanks so much for listening.