Live from LitLink 2025

[MUSIC] Welcome to our special episode of our literacy and justice for all podcast. We are here at LitLink, Georgia 2025. In Atlanta, Georgia, and this conference is hosted and supported by the Department of Education in collaboration with the Rollins Center for Language and Literacy and our free online Cox campus. This episode of our podcast is a really outstanding one. Why? Because we have scholars, researchers, master practitioners, sharing some really critical information to move the needle for students. This information is geared towards teachers, school leaders, and other practitioners who are responsible for children in the K-12 space. Also in this episode, we have our very own Rollins Center and Cox campus team, members from the Georgia Department of Education, sharing their experience here at LitLink 2025. This is our second year hosting this conference in partnership with Georgia DOE. And this conference is really unique and special in many ways. Why? Because this conference is teacher-facing. We work very, very closely with all of our presenters to ensure that the information they're sharing here at LitLink is actionable, it's practical, and it's relevant, not relevant, just for some, but for all. Y'all know our vision statement at the Rollins Center and Cox campus is literacy and justice for all. And the teachers who are here in Georgia, all 650 of them this year, are change makers, change agents, and way makers, and leading the way for literacy and justice for all. So we hope you enjoy the information in this podcast. We also are really eager because we didn't have a lot of time. We're sitting down at the conference. We're just grabbing people as they come and go. But we hope that we can hear more from the guest on this podcast. This is just call it an appetizer into some of the information that they have to share. So we look forward in the next year, over the next year, being able to bring some of these folks back so that you can hear even more from them. And we are really looking forward to LitLink 2026. This has been an amazing experience. Again, all because of our teachers, teachers every day, every way, making a way towards literacy and justice for all. So we hope you enjoy listening. Drop us some notes and some thoughts. Who do you want to hear more from? What do you want to hear more about? We're interested to hear from you. Hi, I'm Maggie Deaton, the lead facilitator for dual language learners at the Rowland Center for Language and Literacy. I just came out of monitoring the session for Dr. Margie Gillis. And here we are kind of at the end of the conference and the joy in the session, the interaction. I feel like people are kind of taking what they've learned across the course of the few days and beginning to put it all together, meaning what she asks, kind of what resonates most. And I could just feel a lot of passion in the room. And I'm still learning today, she shared a quote that I'm reading and writing float on a sea of talk. And she said that was by I think Britain in the 1970s. But for me, because I love oral language, this idea, I just think that's such a powerful visual. And she showed lots of videos of children interacting and learning ways to take different roles in conversation. And I was just so excited to see in this elementary, middle and older children's space. Really that emphasis on oral language. And I'm even more excited because I was coming out on that keynote about multilingual learners and just the passion from Dr. Elsa Cardenas Hegen. And this message to our state, the state of Georgia, that multilingual learners matter. We have to know them. Like Dr. Beverly Tatum talked about, right, when we know who children are, we can help them become what they want to be. And this sense of belonging isn't just a nice thing to have. It is the foundation of the work we're doing. Mr. Der was in Dr. Sean Robinson's session and there was a lot of emotion. There was laughter. There were old tears. There was this kind of reminding us all of the power we have to change the trajectory for a child. And I was thinking a lot about, we also as teachers, the realization that children also change our trajectory. And so I felt that sense at LitLink that we are hearing people's stories. Okay, these are experts from books, but there's a reason why they're in the work and reminding us to think about why are we in this work to keep us motivated and energized, to keep staying curious and going forward. Hi, I'm Jennifer Green and I am a science of reading or of structured literacy, professional development coach with a focus on multilingual learners. This is my first year at LitLink and it was really energizing and vibrant. This conference, the keynote speakers were phenomenal. I hope teachers, I know they enjoyed listening to them. I'm sure when they walk away and deal a little more research, they'll discover that these are some like rock stars in the world of literacy. So they had really an amazing privilege of hearing the experts speak. And I just love talking with teachers and seeing teachers connect with each other and coaches as well. I had some excellent conversations with coaches about what they're learning and what they're already doing in their districts, but how they can keep pushing that forward to really make a major difference in reading outcomes for children across Georgia. This conference really is a standout in that it's, you know, that it is here to serve tea primarily teachers, not researchers, not people from the world of higher education. And so everything has been really thoughtfully planned and targeted toward teachers in the real work that they do in classrooms. Welcome back to the literacy and justice for all podcasts. I'm Dr. Ryan Lee James and I have the pleasure of spending just a few minutes with Dr. Elsa Cardena's Hay in this afternoon. And have a really important question for Dr. Cardena's Hay again. You are probably familiar with her work. She's a bilingual speech language pathologist and expert in multi-teaching multilingual literacy in the science of reading. She's on many national councils and boards. Actually just want a really important award for a video that she did about teaching students, but I'll let her share that. We know that the population in our country of multilingual learners continues to rise. When we think about literacy and justice for all access for all and reaching all students, multilingual learners are a critical part of that population. So we just have one simple question for Dr. Cardena's Hay in today and that is what do teachers and school leaders need to know about multilingual learners and the science of reading? Thank you so much for having me and really caring about multilingual learners and caring about how we can do better. And one of the things I want to tell you and dispelling a myth is that we do have national studies, national consensus reports that really demonstrate the extra things that we have to do to have great outcomes and literacy for these students. What are they? Number one, we have to know about their language and their language proficiency. We have to build upon that language and link it to literacy. So that means I know the kinds of sentences they're producing. I know the kind of vocabulary they have. I know about the use of the language. Today I talked about have your students speak in complete sentences and you speak in complete sentences. But what can educators do? First things first, you know their language, you make those connections across the languages. So a language like Vietnamese for example, you know they have sounds in their language that are made with the lips just like ours. How can we make those connections? A language like Spanish and English. Lots of the letters are the same, the sound, many sounds are the same, but there's some differences. Let's teach those similarities and the differences. And then that way you as a teacher become metal, linguistic and so do our students. And what I was demonstrating today is what worries me about working with multilingual learners and working with all learners. We don't want to teach in silos. Oh, let me pick up this program and teach phonological awareness. Let me get the next program for phonics and the next program as a basal series for read the louds. And what we want to do is we want to link that sound system, right? The phonological awareness to the phonics, to the fluency, to the reading connected text, to the comprehension and to the writing. And teachers say, "We don't have time for writing. We do that after school." No, you're going to integrate listening, speaking, reading and writing. And I want every teacher out there to kind of think in their minds, "I'm a language teacher." I'm a literacy teacher and I'm a content area teacher. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to bring in the language and the literacy into everything that I teach. But I'm going to do so in a very purposeful and intentional manner. And one of the things, you know, we think about phonological awareness, oh, we're just working with sounds and we create words. When you're working with a multilingual learner, they don't even know the words that they're creating. So you've got to talk about the vocabulary and the use of those words. And how we use those words and give the students the opportunity to speak and to read and to write. Absolutely. Wonderful. So, let me just ask you, so I said one question, but let me ask another question. What are the two or three or maybe four myths that are really important to dispel around multilingual learners and the science of reading? The first thing I'd like to dispel is that we do have research on this body, this population of students. And some people will say, oh, there's no research on the science of reading and multilingual learners. Or they've only done the research in special education and not in the general education, tier one or in the small group. We have done it in all levels of implementation, tier one, tier two, tier three. And what we have found are these evidence-based practices, just like in English, they've got to have that foundation in phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension. But what you need to do differently is bring in the connections across languages, bringing it in the cross-language connection, and bringing in those culturally and linguistically responsive teaching practices. Do you know your student? Do you know their culture? And we bring that into the classroom and engages and motivates the students. That's what we know from the science. The linguistic responsiveness, what does that do? It actually makes a difference for the reading, the writing, the spelling. Thank you. All right. So you've given teachers and school leaders some really good things to think about as it relates to multilingual learners. Where can they get more information, more practical applied information, not just the work that you've done, but any resources that you want to share? I love to talk to you about number one. Everybody goes to reading rockets. A lot of teachers know about reading rockets. We have a partner to reading rockets called colorin colorado, colorin colorado. And in there we have reading 101 for English learners, we have videos about assessment. We also have the reading universe. And it's all about the how to implement the science of reading, right? How to implement structured literacy. And you know there, there's a whole strand on English learners. And I was just saying that, you know, one of the, I'm featured in one of the videos teaching an English learner, you know, language and literacy. And I understand from WETA and reading universe that want an award, you know, this kind of television award. Yeah. And because that really is bringing the highlight about education and the implementation. And so there's more videos to come with that. At the University of Houston where I get to work, there's a national center in English learners called the C cell center, C, right, for the center for these students. And it's really focused on adolescent English learners. And we need more research in that area. And so that is a wonderful place to go. There's also the meadow center and it has the top 10 things to do for English learners and for other things, which is really, really great. And finally, at the International Dislex Association, for example, on the main page, I have fact sheet on screening for English learners, assessment for English learners, you know, how to implement phonological awareness. That is all right there, all for free for our teachers. And so we're getting a lot more resources. One other one that I'm just now implementing is called the Evidence Advocacy Center, EAC. And that one we have one on language variations. It has a whole menu of references and resources and it has here the top 10 maxims, just like Ryd Lyon did, but for English learners. And so I think those are some wonderful resources that I'd love to share. Well, Dr. Cardain is Hagen. Thank you so much for taking a few minutes to talk with us today. I know that teachers are going to be flocking to this information. Teachers in Georgia, teachers around our country who are totally committed to what you said. Being change makers, our teachers, our change makers, way makers, they're going to help us realize literacy and justice for all. And in fact, all means all, which includes multi-lingual learners. Right. Children are there, they're smart, and they can do it. We need to reach and teach all the children. And that literacy, it is the bridge to equity. Literacy is the bridge to equity. Dr. Cardain is Hagen. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Stacy Schwab and I am special projects implementation manager for the Royal and Center at the Atlanta Speech School. I'm Laura Bulman, I'm the director of strategy and operations at the Royal and Center and for our Cox campus online. For me as a native Georgian and also as the parent of children in school and as a career educator, focused on educational equity and access. I am so personally pleased and I'm sleeping well at night despite all the busyness because when I wake up, I am meeting with and seeing and learning alongside, you know, 630. Georgia Public School Educators, Georgia Public School classroom teachers, coaches, reading specialists, principals, district personnel, and it just, it feels like a movement, not a moment, to be here with teachers and educators from every corner of the state. 140 at least districts, LEAs, charter schools are included. And when we look at the 630 people here and we multiply them by just 25 kids, which is a gross underestimate because of the diversity of roles we have here, that is almost 16,000 students who will be impacted come July 31 or August 1st, whatever the first day of school is, who have had this experience together with us at the Royal and Center, with their colleagues, with national experts and with the Georgia Department of Education. For me, it's really rewarding to see how delighted the teachers are to receive the training, that their journey is going to be facilitated in an extraordinary way that really words can't describe how this conference will impact their students. And so the work that's gone into this, the long hours, the planning, the weekly meetings for over a year has really paid off. I think one of the things that I love about LitLink is we are sort of unapologetically slash very intentionally unique and different. Everything that we thought of, everything that we plan for is truly about Georgia's teachers. And Georgia's teachers, like teachers everywhere, don't often get the opportunity to have a conference dedicated to them in the classroom. It's hard to get sub-time, release time, it's hard to leave your kids and lose those learning days. So this few days over the summer is unique and we appreciate so deeply the time that they have dedicated, driving here, traveling here, being away from their families, giving up precious days in summer to be in community and learn together. And so as a result of that, I think we've put a lot of intentionality behind our appreciation efforts. We started with massages for teachers. We've had King of Pops here as a nice little welcome tree. We had a beautiful reception that we're going to rebrand, we think, as adult recess next year. So that's sort of a fun twist on our teacher appreciation reception. We have great raffles and all of this is to really see our teachers honor their time, honor their craft and profession. Which we just so greatly appreciate them being here. So I hope that that really has come through last year, this year and next year as well. And we really wanted to ensure that it was a safe space. And so by not having vendors who are trying to sell them something and by having peer organizations represented here, 12 of them who have free resources for Georgia's teachers in ways that they can enhance their learning for free. They are in alignment with us and Cox campus and the free resources there. And so we wanted to make sure that teachers felt safe to learn and to ask questions and to be comfortable in wherever they were in their structured literacy journey. My name is Nick Filman. I am the State Literacy Coaching Coordinator for Georgia Department of Education. The sessions I've attended have really focused on different aspects of the literacy route and different types of subgroups of children who are in front of us as a coaching coordinator. I think it's really important that we make sure we develop really well-rounded information for our teachers and for ourselves rather than just identifying like a lane and just deepening yourself in that one landing. Subgroup-wise, multilingual learners is an area that I've really been exploring. We often take for granted the needs of multilingual learners who are in front of us and the fact that it's not an entirely separate curriculum. When we have multilingual learners, it's really additional steps that we layer on top of regular tier one instruction, but the key is there to be like really, really intentional with it, rather than just haphazard and responsive in the moment. This is the season of conferences, so I'm definitely like hopping from one to another. Litlink is, it's really well organized, but I think the main thing for me with Litlink is it's like laser focused on teacher and practitioner level. Often having attended conferences as a teacher in the past and even as state level now, the teachers in the room kind of get lost in a sea of suits and ties and this is a totally different vibe. It feels more like a really large local conference. It feels like the people, the teachers know each other with it being the second year. I actually have seen some teachers who's reconnected and haven't seen each other since last Litlink, so I love that it's developing that community of practice piece from all over the state. I think really to me that's the entire the heart of Litlink is like yes, it's focused on literacy, yes, it's focused on instruction, but it's focused on the teachers, and it almost feels like anybody else who's not a classroom teacher, which at this point would be me as well. We almost become the outsiders and the learning from the teachers, rather than the dynamic that's often flipped at other conferences. I have with me Dr. Lisa Domke, professor at Georgia State University expert in literacy and multilingual learners, and she has a message for us today that she's been sharing at Litlink. She shared with us last year at our first Litlink 2024 and hopefully we'll be able to get her back for 2026. So let's kick off with very simple but important question. What do teachers and school leaders need to know about literacy as it relates to multilingual learners? Thanks so much for having me. I think one of the biggest things is how important students' home languages are in helping them develop literacy, whether it's in home language but also in English too, because we always learn that we build on what we know when we're attaching new information, and that home language is just critical. It's critical to identity and to all the learning that students do. And so you know with building on that home language and making connections to it and affirming it with what we're reading and having texts in the classroom, all of those are really important with supporting students. Yeah. So for some teachers, I know as we work with teachers in Georgia but also teachers across the country, there is some hesitancy around, you know, because we hear that try to leverage the students' first language, honor their first language, but there's some hesitancy sometimes. And sometimes I hear from teachers like, I'm monolingual. My students, I have several students that speak Spanish. I don't want to feel silly. I don't want to say something wrong. What are some strategies that you've used to support teachers who go, listen, I really want to do what you're saying, but I just don't know how. And I'm not comfortable doing it. So one of the big things is taking that stance as a learner, that you're excited to learn languages and know different ways of saying things because you're modeling that for your students and creating that affirming safe environment and not putting students on the spot like how do you say this, but kind of opening up to the class of, you know, what are some other ways we could say this and other languages? What other words do you know for it? And things like Google Translate can be really helpful especially because it has audio that will play the words in many languages so that if it's a language that you don't speak, it will use the audio and it will say it. And students can correct it because Google Translate is not perfect, but it's a great opportunity to again involve students and have them be the leaders and the teachers and say, oh, but we say this at home or that, you know, I would say it this way and so that can be really helpful. And there's other great AI tools to, similar to Google Translate, a lot of people have been talking about deep L, like the letter L, all attached to the word deep as another translation tool like D E E P L. Yes. Okay. Yeah. And so those are some great actions plus Google Translate also will use photos and it will, like you can hold your camera over a text and it will overlay it in another language. And even with that audio capability, having students speak into it and it will translate it into the language that you're speaking so that way you can have that real-time connection there. So those are some ways as well as thinking about how you pair students. If you have several who speak the same language, having giving them opportunities to talk, not necessarily translate always for each other because they're trying to learn what's happening to, but giving them those chances to think about, you know, what are some other ways they can say it, represent it. Often teachers, they're worried, you know, if I bring home languages in that, you know, how am I going to help them learn English too? And part of it is recognizing that in the US, English, learning English is very different than like how I learned Spanish in high school where literally the high school classroom was the only place I had Spanish. And so we really had to protect that space and really focus on using it all the time. But kids encounter English outside the classroom at recess, at lunch, in specials outside. Outside of a school of building. Yeah, you name it everywhere. So they're picking up English and hearing it all over. And you're still intentionally focusing on English concepts in the classroom, but it doesn't, you know, home language does not become a crutch in quotes that often, you know, people think it could be. It becomes a tool and an affirming space and tool. And I like how you're talking about leveraging language, not just to learn language, but also as a tool for affirming student's identity. And we're going to be releasing on the Cox campus, the keynote conversation that we had yesterday with Dr. Beverly Tatum. And that was what she was saying, right? Like we have, in order for students to feel safe, psychologically in a classroom, which we know now from research, that's a prerequisite to learning. They have to feel like they belong. And what I also hear you saying is that teachers can bring students in and draw them in by making some mistakes and taking some risks and showing students that this is a safe place to do that. I don't know everything about your first language, but I want to know more about your language, not only to support you, but to reaffirm you in this space, which I think is huge for us, especially in a day where we're having so much anti-conversation when this isn't necessarily just about race or ethnicity, but more about making sure that students, all students feel affirmed in the classroom. And even modeling, how could I look this up if I don't know how to say it or get that information? Because then you're modeling those digital literacy skills and some of the critical of like, so how would I look this in a dictionary or decide which word this could be that would best fit it? And that applies for anything. Any facts students want to know, but that learner stance and modeling, well, how could I find the answer if depending on what the classroom knowledge is of it too? Yeah, well, you've already dropped. I was going to ask you about myths that you wanted to spell. You've already dropped one around home language is or first language is not a crutch. It's an asset. Any other myths that you wanted to spell for folks who might just have wondering about multilingual learners and literacy? Another one is that often we think we should tell parents to speak English at home to give more English practice for students, but actually that can be really detrimental. Research has found that it does not lead to increases in English development for students when we tell that to parents and it in fact leads to language loss of that home language. And anecdotally, talked with students who've had that recommendation for their families and they've lost abilities in time to talk to parents and family members where they've had to have siblings translate for them to talk to their own family members. And so you're losing those relational bonds. You're also losing those opportunities for students to do develop all that oral language and listening comprehension in their home language, which also translates and supports English and other language additional language development later. So that would be another myth too. And sometimes parents think, "Oh, I need to do all English at home." But no, you really want to enforce with them that their home language and everything they're doing in it is so critical for their children. Their development and doesn't hinder their development, but supports their development in important ways. Yes. Well, Dr. Domke, we are incredibly grateful for your partnership at the Rowland Center and Cox Campus, not just for you being at LitLink, but coming in speaking to our team and sharing knowledge and sharing these tools that you've shared here. And we encourage teachers to go and learn more about your work. Where can they learn more, read more about the things that you've done and published on this topic? So I have a list on Google Scholar, but I've written a lot for teachers in the Journal, the Reading Teacher, which it's a great journal published by the International Literacy Association that's written for teachers very practical, but all based on evidence and research. It's peer reviewed by teachers and researchers. So that's a really great professional development resource, just overall and in general. And I've got several pieces there that are a great starting point. Great. Dr. Domke, thank you so much for talking to us. Thanks for having me. My name is Amy Dantey. I'm the Director of Literacy at the Georgia Department of Education. LitLink is always such a treat because it brings together a large number of classroom teachers who are really working hard during the school year to get the work done. And we can bring them to LitLink and we can celebrate that work, we can provide really high quality, keynote speakers and breakout sessions, just unsurpassed quality really there. And I think the best thing about this year has been the true connections that I'm seeing. And we call ourselves LitLink because we want to link teachers together. And it's been really validating to actually see that happen. And here teachers talk about the connections, read their comments in the app. It's just been fabulous. Well, it's been a great experience. I love the networking. So getting to know people throughout Georgia and kind of tapping into what they're doing and where they are really helps understand, you know, where Georgia is in this LitRC fight if you will. And the sessions are very engaging. They are teacher-facing. Really teachers come away with just a lot to put into their toolkit, if you will. So all of the engaging activities they can take away, they get the links for reproducing them once they get back to their buildings. So it is very teacher-friendly and you can tell the focus was on empowering teachers and making it an easy transition for change of practice. It's a great experience. I would highly recommend any teacher or educator in Georgia to come check it out. It's a great resource and it's been a great conference. And like I said, it's just been exciting to see everyone else so excited about being here. Just walking through the halls, you just hear people talking and just giving the team praise for how well it has been orchestrated and how much knowledge that they've had. So definitely a great experience. I highly recommend it. My name is Dr. Nadia Jones and I serve as the Director of Partnerships for the Royal and Center for Language and Literacy. Please, please, please encourage your school district leaders, other colleagues to attend a little. You do not want to miss it. The content that is curated for this event is very, very intentional and is unique to the needs of the learners in Georgia but then also globally, right? So this isn't just something that's impacting students and teachers in our state and we know that but it is definitely applicable to so many more children and so many other places and so you do not want to miss the opportunity to gather at LitLink and make those connections. And so just very excited to have this opportunity to meet so many people from all across the state and just to learn a little bit more about what they do and the ways that they serve the children and families that where they live. This year, being year two, we are definitely just as excited as we were in year one. See some familiar faces. So that's always fun and then also just the speakers again, they really bring it. They really bring it, they spare no expense and just the impact that they bring to their talking points. All of the takeaways are just so energetic and really, really full of content that practitioners can use and apply immediately. And I think that's really important. Sometimes I know from me I feel like when I leave conferences I'm like, "Wow, can I use this right now?" You know, but I don't have that question here. When you leave here, these are things that you can literally take into your classroom, into your workspace and utilize immediately and that's the goal. That is what we wanted to happen and that continues to happen. So we're just so excited and thankful that we have the opportunity to partner with Georgia DOE and others to make this happen. Welcome back to our Literacy and Justice for All Podcasts. I'm Dr. Ryan Lee James and have the privilege this afternoon of talking to Dr. Sherita Thomas Tate, faculty member, researcher, camp director, speech language pathologist, all things. And she's going to be sharing with us a little bit today along the lines of multilingual learners, but talking about a specific group of different diverse language background users. And we talk about these children often as non-mainstream dialect speakers. So I want to ask Dr. Thomas Tate in a similar fashion that I've asked others, "What are the most salient things school teachers and leaders should know about working with non-mainstream dialect speakers?" Thank you for that question. I appreciate it being here. So when I think about non-mainstream English speakers, I'm talking about speakers who speak a dialect of American English in particular. These are variations of a mainstream variety. And we all speak dialects of English, of American English. We all have some variation. And when we think about a typical language, let's say like English, but every language has these variations. But we take a language like English, we talk about the component of English being phonology, semantics, syntax, and pragmatics for every dialect, which again, all of us are dialect speakers. We vary on all five of those aspects of a language. So you're going to have variations in technology with regards to how words are pronounced. You're going to have variations of how morphine are used. You're going to have variations on the syntax and grammar. There's variations including semantics which are often very salient. You'll know those variations and vocabulary. We talk about things like pop, right? How people from different areas say pop or soda or cold drink or coke. That's a semantic variation. And again, we all have those variations. So when we talk about the non-mainstream speakers, they're going to have these variations. They are speaking English, but they are very based on your region or your social class or your educational background or your social group or class. So when you talk about how English or how dialects of English can vary in systematic ways from the mainstream language, that's the word that I forgot systematic because these are rule-gover. Yes, it's very rule-gover. So like for example, I'm from Oregon and I moved to Louisiana as an undergrad. I spoke African-American English, but it was very different from the African-American English in Louisiana. There were rules about how to do it. And I learned those rules as a student in Louisiana. And there are some dialect features of African-American English that I don't use. And so when I try to use them, it doesn't sound right because there's also all of the super-segmentals that are attached to those variations. So don't say. Dr. Thomas Tate, what are super-segmentals? All right, those super-segmentals are all those extra parts of speech that I'm going along with the production of speech. So how long you produce a sound or how quickly you stop it, how forceful it is, all of those extra pieces that make sounds, words sound different. Okay. Like an accent. So thank you for that and expanding more on the systematicness, the rule-gover nature of dialects. Can you also share a little bit about how those variations can impact learning to read? So it's a speech-language pathologist. I know a lot about oral language. Obviously you do. How, when you're talking to teachers about reading and writing, what do you say to them about how language can vary and how that can impact learning or reading, right? So. And spell. How literacy, in particular, literacy is a language-based activity. So some of the things that I often talk to teachers about is how to incorporate oral language into their literacy practices because it's very important for them to include that because literacy is a language-based activity. When we think about non-stream English speakers, they're varying on those five components of late. which means that their practices may need to change for those kids also or they need to be made more explicit. Right? So some of those areas of language for your mainstream English speakers, they may have instructional practices that are geared toward those mainstream English speakers. They are going to get those skills based on those practices, but when you have someone who's non-mainstreaming the speaker, some of those practices need to be altered in order to make them more explicit for those non-mainstream English speakers. And in particular, it's important that teachers recognize that those variations aren't disorders. They're not deviant. They're just different. And they need to make sure that they are valuing those differences in order for these children to be able to accept these practices, because otherwise you get this tension between the teachers and the students where these differences are a part of a cultural experience. And then you get this tension that is a barrier to learning from any students if they have their language being not valued. Yeah, which is kind of back to. So you have made that point. Elsa Cardenas, Hagen has made that point. And Lisa Domke, around the importance of belonging essentially, reaffirming and affirming students' language use. So I want to go back to a couple things you said. One thing you said was that language variation does not assume include necessarily indicate a language disorder. So give us an example when you're talking about things that you do with teachers, how a practice may need to be more explicit. So let's talk about, for example, morphological differences. Okay. The word may be walked past tense ED at the end of that word. And African American English morphological endings are verably included. They may be present. They may not be present. There are rules about when they're included and when they're not included. So we're not just deleting every past tense marker or plural marker. There are rules about when you are going to do that. And so while they can talk about teaching ED markers to kids who are mainstream English speakers, that instruction may need to be more explicit for a diet speaker where those are verably included. So making it very salient for them with regards to both how it sounds and how it's spelled so that those two things could be put together in their learning. You may not need to do that for mainstream speakers because they're not verably included. You're talk about past tense. You're going to always put a past tense marker on there. But when you are a dialect speaker, there are rules about when you do them when you don't. And if you're making that speech to print, because I know you were talking about how you use the work of Luis Samoz in your class with the language essentials book, if you're talking about making that speech to print connection for children who are not mainstream dialect speakers, they're going to need maybe more time, more explicit. More practice. More practice. Okay. Another example that I can think of is there is a item on the C-top, the comprehensive test of phonological processing. And I use as an example often with my students. If you have four items and you're trying to get kids to identify the in these out of a word. So the word, and these are off the top of my head, these are not the ones from the test. The word may be beef. The final sound is. And then they have a picture of teeth, a cot, a tough and dog African American English speakers may choose teeth because in African American English, the final constant TH can be produced as a sound. They're not wrong. They're identifying the sound based on their production. But which is governed by the rules of their dialects. But for the purposes of spelling and reading, they need to be able to identify that the final sound in the word teeth is written as TH, even if they produce it as a sound as teeth. Wow. So what I hear you saying, it is that working with students from whose language background may differ in some ways from mainstream English like we're in Georgia and United States. We're teaching mainstream English in schools, mainstream English or academic English in classrooms that are teachers and school leaders need to be more intentional, more tuned in to this. And aware and aware. Okay. The awareness part is recognizing that there, this is a patterned systematic difference. It's not just random and they're not errors. They are matching their speech and their print to their community speech and print. Well, actually not print, but mostly just their speech. But as we're teaching print, taking oral English to written language, it has to be explicit that the way that you produce it, which is correct and fine for your speech community is different from the print that we're teaching you in the classroom. So this, so I'm a segue into asking you about some myths. So just when I hear you say that it lifts for me that if we just can have sort of a mindset shift as teachers and leaders and SLPs and OTs, anybody who's working with kids from different language backgrounds, whether they're speaking Spanish or a non mainstream dialect that if we can see and understand that their language system is rule governed that can that changes us from thinking about difference from a negative place or a deficit based place to a more asset based place. Absolutely. And I will tell you though, from my experience 20 plus years of teaching at this point, that that is easier said than done. That shift that and I tell my students at the beginning of course work that I'm going to challenge your framework. I'm going to help you move into a paradigm shift that's going to feel uncomfortable for you because you've been taught that English is right or wrong. Like a white, that's it. And I'm going to tell you that there's a lot of variation in there. A whole lot of variation in there and it's not wrong. It's just different. And like you said at the beginning that you can look to anybody and see this variation. This is not just one particular. Absolutely. And so I have found that some of the strongest evidence for being able to help the students shift their mindsets has come through having them go through exercises of discovering dialect features. And I use the activities from the North Carolina voices coursework. It's a handbook that's online. It's all online free at this point. It's a course that happened many years ago. But I was done by language. I don't know. I don't want to name a language at the moment because I can't remember exactly which one it was done. But it's voices of North Carolina. I'm pretty sure it was well worth from. And they have exercises for helping students to discover dialect features and it's kind of a dialect awareness kind of activity and he talks about how some of us will have intuitions for some dialect features and some of those won't have those intuitions. I use in particular a prefixing a fixing I'm fixing to go these are an a prefixing that he talks about with Appalachian English. But I'm in the Missouri where Appalachian English is very similar to O's arc English. So some of my students have an intuition about a prefixing that allows them to figure out this dialect feature very well. But then I give my students some African American English features like the invariant B or habitual B and many of them have a lot of difficulty. They can't figure out what it means and how to discover that the rules around it. But and then some of my African American English speakers have hard time with a prefixing sometimes. So it depends on your speech background. And it helps them to recognize that we all have these variations or have been exposed to these variations. Some we see as very normal. Some we don't because they're not a part of our speech community. Wow. Okay. So third kind of final question. You mentioned the North Carolina voices as a resource. I know because I know you that by day you are 10 year track faculty member, researcher scholar by evening after school in summertime. You are running an incredibly successful summer camp focused on not just student outcomes for the students in your community, but also training teacher training SLP training. So tell us more about where we can learn more about your work and any other resources you want to share. I started a nonprofit program. It is called Eugenia language and literacy and it started actually from a class project. I wanted to provide my students at Missouri State University an opportunity to practice the skills that I'm teaching in my literacy language classes with diverse learners. And they weren't having the opportunity to practice practice those things. I teach the cultural linguistic diversity class, but they couldn't apply that knowledge anywhere. So we had to create an opportunity for that and we did through Eugenia language and literacy. Eugenia is a Swahili word that means collective working responsibility. And it's one of the seven principles of Kwanzaa. The program right now is structured around two main activities. We have a family literacy night once a month. and we also have a summer camp. And you can find out more about Ujima language literacy on our website. It is ujima mo.org, ujujim.org, mo from azuri.org. Wonderful. Thank you, Dr. Thomas Tate. We are so grateful to have you here at LitLink with us. It's been fantastic, by the way. Please enjoy this immensely. I wish this was available to more people. And I'm so impressed with the state of Georgia and how much opportunity and how much value you are putting into your teachers around literacy. It's fantastic. I wish more states would also value teachers enough and value what they do enough to provide this kind of learning experience. And every single teacher who I've talked to here was like, I love this. Wow. Well, thank you so much. And I just want to say that on behalf of the Rowland Center and Cox campus, we are delighted to have you as a partner and to be here sharing all the knowledge that you have with our teachers here in the state of Georgia. And we hope you'll come back for LitLink 2020. Wow. So lovely. Thank you, Dr. Thomas Tate. I'm Sarah Difflee and I am a pre-K-5 structured literacy professional learning facilitator. And Jordan Nelms also a pre-K-5 structured literacy learning facilitator. We presented a breakout session on differentiated instruction and how to implement most effective practices in small groups in the classroom. And I also had a chance to talk to Ginger Collins last night during the teacher reception. And we had a great conversation around morphology and she actually said, you know, when you get ready to present on this, maybe next year, reach out to me and we can maybe work together on it. And I was like, that'd be great. I think, you know, one of the great things is being able to see like-minded people being a room together. And something else that has been really interesting and just a highlight of my few days here is being able to reconnect with people that I have taught with before. Some old supervisors and old teammates. So it's been really nice just to be able to see everybody come together and kind of recalibrate and have conversations about what we really were doing a couple of years ago and like how far we've come and then things that we've learned. And then even go back to our different spaces or districts to do that work. The teacher reception is a highlight. So I think the teacher reception is a really unique opportunity for teachers. Like it's exciting to be able to see teachers come to a conference because I think that doesn't happen often enough. But then to also be able to celebrate them and have them come to a reception where they're able to like let lose, have a few drinks and network. And so I think just that provides a space for us to have conversations about what we've learned and kind of debrief about those things. But also just make personal connections too that hopefully we're keeping up but also people who meet each other are keeping up beyond that link. I'm Dr. Ryan Lee James and I am here this afternoon with Dr. Ginger Collins from the University of Montana. Welcome Dr. Collins. Thank you. We are really excited to have you here talking us for just a few minutes about the importance of morphology. So in Georgia and not just Georgia, but I'm sure around it. I've worked in different states, but just thinking about our early literacy legislation that we have dyslexia legislation that's happening around the country. Phenology gets a lot of play, a lot of airtime, a lot of professional development. And something that you talk a lot about in T-Join is the importance of morphology instruction for many reasons. And so that's what we want to talk about. Why just simple question. Why is it important for teachers to include morphology instruction as a part of their language and literacy work? Oh, I think that's a great question because I totally agree. Phenology is extremely important. We need to be teaching our students those phoneme, grapheme, correspondences. However, if you leave morphology out of the picture, you're doing a real disservice. I did a presentation today at the LitLitLit conference and we use lots of examples of words that would be pronounced differently if you ignored those morphemic boundaries. For example, if you look at the word reach, it's just one morpheme. There's no prefix. There's no suffix. Because it's a standalone base, you can just go ahead and start applying those phoneme, grapheme correspondences directly to that word. However, if you have a very similarly, similarly spelled word, like react, well, it only changes by one letter. But the big difference in that word is that it's comprised of two morphemes. It's comprised of the prefix RE and the base element ACT. And so because there are two different morphemes, you're not going to blend the E and the A to form a single long E grapheme. However, that's how a lot of our children are decoding that word when they don't know that there is a morphological difference. Wow. Okay, so I'm going to back up just to Ted now based on something you said. So tell us, so morphology is a morpheme, but morphology is a system of language. Tell us what is what is morphology? What's the study of morphology? Well, morphology is the study of word meanings and typically we talk about word parts and that's sort of like a layman's term for a morpheme. Okay. More themes are comprised of base elements or bases. Sometimes they get called roots and even in the Common Core State Standards are referred to as roots, but that's not entirely accurate. A root refers to the historical origin of a word. It's ancestor way back in Latin or Greek or Norse, but a base element is the part of the word that you that's actually in the English word. So if I had a word like insignificant, well the base is sign. If I strip away the prefix I in and the suffixes ATE, like, okay, I have to like do some spelling in my head. It wasn't prepared for that, but but the sign sign is our base element in that word. So that's a difference between a root and a base, but whenever we're talking about prefixes, bases, and suffixes, that's what we mean by morphemes. There are those all those word parts. Okay, so how early should teachers, so the LITLIN conference is primarily focused on elementary school teachers, so we have some secondary folks here. Obviously, there's a whole lot of learning that happens even before kids get to kindergarten and early learning are just at home. How early should we be starting more phological instruction? Well, some people started at the preschool level. You can start with really simple morphemes, like maybe inflectional endings such as plural S, or progressive ING, or past tense ED. Kids at preschool ages are actually able to handle that already, even if they're not even reading yet, the fact that you can direct their awareness to pick out those parts, like there's a cat and there are two cats. You know, they can hear the difference in that word, and they can identify which one is the plural. So that gives us a lot of evidence that they're tuning in to the morphemes, the morphological makeup of those words. So are you saying that morphological awareness should be, I think what I hear you saying is that like phonological awareness, morphological awareness should be included in the early and emergent literacy work that we're doing with pre-k students or I would say in an ideal world, I would love to see it happen. Okay, okay, so this is great because I have another question for you. So you talked about the importance of morphological instruction for supporting students with decoding. And can you share a little bit about the importance of morphological instruction for meaning? Absolutely. And you touched a little bit on, I love the phrase like the word, a word's ancestor. Yes. And so yeah, share a little bit more about that. Absolutely. So trying to remember the question now, the question is you talked about the meaning. I have the importance of morphological instruction for meaning. Well, that's honestly why I love working using a morphological approach to instruction and intervention is because you get a lot of bang for your book because whenever you teach about the morphemic elements, you know, the different morphemes involved in a word, how they combine. You are working on, you know, improving decoding. You're working on improving spelling. You're working on improving vocabulary knowledge, which in turn improves reading comprehension. So it's a very impactful instructional method. And as far as the roots, I mean, you don't necessarily even have to go back that far, but older kids do it and they actually really enjoy it. You know, we approach it just like you would approach the scientific method in a science class. You know, we teach it like there's a way to inquire about science. You do the step one, do the step two, do the step three. You can do the same thing with language with words. You know, there is a framework that you can follow to investigate words and learn about their meaning. learning about their structure, learn about their relatives. - Yeah, that is so great. Dr. Ginger Collins, I appreciate you sharing this and I as a speech language pathologist, which our listeners know you are too in SLP. So yeah, I mean, it's what I'm appreciating about the presentations that have happened here at LitLink are really so much more than I think what's taking place now in conversations around the science of reading where people are feeling like the science of reading is really only phonics and that's not it. The science of reading is so much more like what you're talking about around morphology. How can, so for people who are not here at LitLink, what information or resources would you like to share with folks? - Sure, there's some, well first I'll start with some that are just freely available online. I think that's a good one where you can dip your toes in. Mary Beth Steven has a blog called, I think that web address is imb_stiven.edu_blogs.org. But if you type in Mary Beth Steven's classroom blog, she does a lot of structured word inquiry in her classroom. And the reason I really like to refer teachers to her is that this is somebody who's walking the walk, and she posts videos, she gets permission to post videos of her classroom, she has lots of pictures, and so you can see it in action, and it really becomes very tangible in how you can approach this in a whole classroom setting. And then also Pete Bowers with wordworkskinkston.com, he is really kind of, we sometimes think of him as the father of structured word inquiry, has also have some great wonderful things on his website. And then some tools that people might find interesting are the online etymology dictionary, which you can look up words and find out their word origins, those roots, the mini matrix maker, the Neil Ramston's word searcher. And then if you're looking for some books, well I guess I'll stick with some of these free resources first. There are also some great Facebook groups. And these are frequented by both teachers and SLPs. So there's some great conversations going between. Those two worlds, but if you get onto the Facebook and type in structured word inquiry, you'll see several different ones. There's, my research group is on there, structured word inquiry research vanguard. There's also learning how words work with structured word inquiry. There's one that's just simply called structured word inquiry and structured word inquiry in the classroom. So even if you just wanna like kind of dip your toes, find out what's going on, see what other people are doing, that's a great place to start. - Okay. - And then if you wanna take a deeper dive, some books I would definitely recommend. One is Beneath the Surface of Words by Sue Heggland. Another one is Teaching How the Written Word Works by Pete Bowers, Vocabulary and Morphology, using structured word inquiry by Lisa Barnett and Katie Squires and structured word inquiry. It's just the name of the other book. - Great. - I think if you don't mind, if you share that list, I'm sure I think we can post that. - Okay. - Along with this podcast, I also wanna say, before we end, Dr. Ginger Collins has provided the Cox campus with a webinar series that we are gonna be launching very soon. And the reason we are so excited about that, not just because we love Dr. Ginger Collins and Morphology, but because your information that you provided in that webinar series is really practical for teachers to be able to get that information and like you said, be able to apply it in the classroom. - Absolutely. - So just wanna leave you with anything else you wanna share for teachers. Any other resource, little tidbit of knowledge, anything that's really important that you think teachers should know. - Sure. And I think, I've done a couple of presentations here at Georgia Litlink. They've been well received. Teachers have really had a lot of good things to say, but also have heard it's a lot to learn. You don't, I don't think you have to go in 100% right away. In fact, when I've worked with some teachers side by side, we've started off with just some bell ringers. You know, and that's a good way to kind of dip your toe when we maybe do a base of the day, something like that, where they would do a little bit of investigation at the beginning of class. And then it gave the students an exposure to morphemes and morphological awareness, but it also gave the teacher exposure in a slow and criminal way, so it wasn't overwhelming. And so I just challenge, that's the challenge. I'd like everybody to take up today, is maybe think about a way to do it, just a little bit of incorporating that into their classroom routines. - Okay, so you've got your call to action from Dr. Ginger Collins, take it bit by bit, but start incorporating some morphologies, some morphological routines and instruction, even if it's just for a little bit to get your students, feet wet, but also to start building your instructional practices. - Agreed. - Dr. Ginger Collins, thank you for chatting with us. - Okay, no problem, thank you. - Littleink 2025's a wrap, thanks y'all.