LM Feb 2022

HumilityMatters: Listening and Literacy Leadership

By Dr. Kaine Osburn Superintendent, Avoca SD #37

Every successful leader has learned the importance of humility. Nothing has taught this like COVID, of course. Additionally, no leaders accomplish anything worthwhile alone. When I arrived as Superintendent of Avoca District 37 in the Summer of 2019, I had years of experience and had been successful in previous jobs on many accounts. Luckily, I had made enough mistakes to realize I did not know everything and that collaboration was necessary for success. Knowing the value of humility and collaboration has had a real impact on students’ learning at Avoca, and the ability to support change at a statewide level. Both of these are related to reading. Specifically, when I arrived in Avoca, my Board Vice President, Louise Dechovitz, and another parent shared concerns that we were not approaching literacy instruction properly. They had done their own research and had personal experiences that made them arrive at this conclusion. Any administrator can understand the defensiveness that can arise when a board or community member says they have done their own research and concluded your school is falling short. I too could have had that moment. By all accounts—IAR or NAEP or other measures—overall, Illinois schools are failing too many students when it comes to reading. The stats have long told a woeful tale of what is in store for people when they cannot read proficiently. While Avoca and statewide stats differ, still 20–25 percent of Avoca students graduate without reading proficiently, according to IAR. I know we have amazing teachers. But I was not well versed in early literacy and was unsure why our reading outcomes were not better. As a leader, it is my obligation to ask questions, learn, and to determine a course of action. So that is what I did. (Avoca has no Curriculum Director.) I read the research, dived deep with my principal on the topic, and it was clear: Students, especially K–3, needed explicit and systematic instruction in key, well-defined areas so they could decode and become fluent readers prior to 3rd grade. And we needed to stop using detrimental methods, like the 3-cue system popularized by one prominent curriculum or using pictures so students guessed at identifying words.

As it happened, my K–5 staff, especially K–3 teachers, were already a few steps down the road of adopting the curriculum and instructional practices aligned with what is commonly known as the “Science of Reading” for early grades. Important pieces were in place—but not all of them. And they still are not. Unlearning and re-learning take time (thanks Mike Lubelfeld). But humility teaches patience. Our administration and teachers have taken great strides and will continue to do so in the coming years, especially around professional learning. That’s for another article. But it was clear that our veteran staff had not previously—in preservice education or since—received in-depth learning on what research showed was the most effective approach to teaching kids to read. A well-resourced district like ours, over time, could remedy this problem. Not all communities are so fortunate. Statewide, early literacy is perhaps the greatest equity issue of our era. And, so, in Spring 2021, Ms. Dechovitz proposed our Board sponsor a resolution to be adopted by the IASB Delegate Assembly, advocating for legislation requiring preservice teachers receive explicit training in the scientifically proven approach to teaching early literacy and pass a Foundations of Reading exam to ensure they enter the profession ready to teach our kids how to read. When the time came, at 10 p.m. on a Friday night in Springfield, Ms. Dechovitz and I made our case to the IASB Resolutions Committee about why this was so important. The entire IASB Assembly supported the resolution last November. That humility and collaboration have led to Illinois Senate Bill 3900 ( House Bill 5032), the Illinois Right to Read Act, which promotes very reasonable steps to improve preservice and in-servce education for teachers, without imposing unfunded mandates on K–12 schools. For my colleague Superintendents: While this journey might look a little unusual, it is a great reminder that even 25 years into a career, we can unlearn, we can learn anew, and we can make a real impact. Now go support Senate Bill 3900/ House Bill 5032.

17 LM February 2022