On this episode of the Innovative Schools podcast, we're sitting down with Corey Collins to talk about literacy, what teachers can do to improve literacy, and a lot of nerdy things that I wish I knew when I was in school that help kids understand vocabulary and words. So come on. Let's learn together. Hey, everybody, and welcome to this episode of the Innovative Schools Podcast. I'm Jordan.
Speaker 2:Hey, everybody. I'm Liz. I'm glad to see you all today.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's good. I mean, I really wish this is more of a two way street. It's good to see you. Fantastic to see you.
Speaker 2:And yeah. It's just
Speaker 1:a blessing to sit here So with you Liz, before we get into who we're talking to today, I have a question for you.
Speaker 2:Ask away, man.
Speaker 1:My question is, did you enjoy reading when you were of school age?
Speaker 2:I don't know. That's kind of a complicated question because when I was a kid, you know, they had these things called AR tests. Do you remember those? Did they have those with you?
Speaker 1:I don't think so. I mean, you are We went to school in two different states. So I think it was a little different.
Speaker 2:You also are a little bit older than I am. So Thanks. You're welcome. But no. We had these really cool things called AR tests.
Speaker 2:And so you would read basically as many books as you kind of could at a time. And then you would take these little quizzes on them, and then you would get prizes. Interesting. And so it was very incentive based, and I loved the prizes.
Speaker 1:So Okay. So was it like a it was like a test, though? Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I had the Book It program was a thing that we did. You'd read I don't remember exactly how it worked. Just remember the end result was free pizza at Pizza Hut. But I know that we had to read books, and then somehow turn in that we read those books.
Speaker 1:And then we'd get a coupon or something. And we could get free pizza at Are you kidding? Pizza Hut. Did not get free pizza. What in the world?
Speaker 1:I'm kind of upset now. It's because I'm older, you know? The I just brought that up. Darn. No, I want to talk about so reading is a really big topic in education right now.
Speaker 1:I was not someone who read a whole lot in school. I pretty much stuck to comic books.
Speaker 2:That tracks. Orcs. That tracks. Or
Speaker 1:I really liked the Hatchet series of books. I don't know if you know those. No, It's it Hatchet, Brian's Winter, Brian's Return. It was this story about this kid who was on a plane, a small plane, and it crashes. And then he has to survive in the wilderness, and all he has is his windbreaker and his jacket.
Speaker 1:And I thought those books those were the ones that when a new one came out, I read it.
Speaker 2:This is making so much sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah. This is making so much sense. But outside of that, I did not do a lot of reading. I wish I had done more. But with reading being in the news and even the way that kinda how I was with with reading growing up Mhmm.
Speaker 1:I thought it'd be really good for us to talk to somebody who I consider an expert on literacy and reading in the education space to kinda help us go through these all these questions about reading and what teachers can do and everything like that. So I want to welcome right now is Corey Collins. Hey, Corey.
Speaker 3:Hey. What's going on, Jordan? Hey, Liz.
Speaker 2:Hey. How are you?
Speaker 3:I'm doing good. I just I'm already excited hearing all this reading talk.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Did you do a lot of reading when you were a kid or is that something that came later for you?
Speaker 3:So it's an interesting question because I went to a I grew up in the Upstate New York in a very urbanized area where reading just wasn't one of those things that was just kinda everybody knew was important, but it just wasn't one of the priorities in the situations that I grew up with, my peers grew up with. But I had an amazing sixth grade teacher, and it's weird how this all went down. The way the school day was structured, we had six or seven periods of class, but that eighth period of class was called our flex period. And all that was was a time of, like, forty five, fifty minutes to where we could get a start on our homework because, obviously, homework was an issue for a lot of people going home into the to some of the situations that they were going to. So the school thought it'd be be wise, and it was, to put us in a position to where we can at least get a jump start on our homework and at least make some headway there.
Speaker 3:So sometimes when you finished homework, you don't really have anything to do. So I had a teacher, I'll never forget her name, missus missus Otati. She was actually my homework teacher my homeroom teacher and my flex teacher. And she had given me a series that you probably are both really familiar with. It's probably one of the most familiar series of all times, and it was Goosebumps by R.
Speaker 3:L. Stine.
Speaker 1:I actually scare very easy, so
Speaker 3:I know Those will do it.
Speaker 1:The series, but I never read any of the books.
Speaker 2:I loved those books. Oh
Speaker 3:my gosh. So she gave me this book and I read it and I I really enjoyed it. And then what she did next was probably the most magical thing that could have ever happened to put me on the the trajectory to where I am now. And she gave me an index card and had me write down that one book that I read. And she said she said, Corey, you know what?
Speaker 3:I'm gonna keep let's let's keep track of all the books you read, during this this year. She said, have all these goosebumps books if that's what you wanna go, if there's another route you wanna go, but I have all these books for you to that you have access to. And every time you finish, I'm gonna take this card out, and you're gonna write down the book that you read and the author that wrote it, and you're gonna put it back. Now she had this if you I don't know. Liz, you might be a little too young.
Speaker 3:Jordan, I think we're a little bit closer in each. Do you remember do you remember, like, the the Dewey decimal system with the calls? Yes. The long drawers that
Speaker 1:you could put in whole drawer. Right? And you had to finger through all the little Did
Speaker 3:you go yeah. Yep. It's like a little book Rolodex. Yeah. She had, like, a mini version of that, and that's that she just threw I don't know what it was for other than it held my index card of all the books that I read.
Speaker 3:And that was the greatest thing that probably ever happened as as a reader that it was just kinda like a cool to see the list kinda grow and grow. And that's all it was. She didn't do anything with it. There was no there was no prize at the end. There was no
Speaker 1:No pizza.
Speaker 3:No pizza. Pizza. No book it. No, no coupons. It was just I don't know.
Speaker 3:It was it was incredibly weirdly motivating for me to add books to that list. And that's kind of where the the the reading journey started for me as I consider myself an avid reader now. It wasn't always the case, but I think it started in sixth grade.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's awesome. So now though, so you started when you're younger, let's talk about just where you are in your educational career right now. You are a teacher at the Ron Clark Academy.
Speaker 3:Yes, sir.
Speaker 1:Right? You teach literacy I teach fourth reading?
Speaker 3:Yep. I teach fourth and fifth grade reading, not to be confused with ELA. Okay. Because that's all, like, the writing and the grammar and
Speaker 1:stuff,
Speaker 3:which is not not my strong suit. But my two counterparts, Kim Bearden and Amy Loiselle, they're both writing and grammar and ELA queens. So I'm very fortunate to be able to focus on really what I love and they love the ELA side, they get to do that part. So it's really a match made in heaven. Very thankful for both of them.
Speaker 1:That's great. How long have you been at the academy?
Speaker 3:I just started my tenth year here at the Wow, Lark I'm old. Yeah, it's really we have a group of there's another teacher and another two other colleagues that came in at the same time. So this has been our this is like our ten year anniversary. Yeah. So just it's been an incredible ride and That thankful to be a part of is awesome.
Speaker 3:It's crazy.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You can really tell I know this about the Ron Clark Academy. If you're watching the video of this, you can see it, but I'll talk about it a little bit is behind you is this painted wall. And, hopefully I'm getting this correct is every teacher, they get the room and they can kind of decorate their room how they want and have things painted on the walls. And yours, I think, speaks specifically to your love and your teaching of reading.
Speaker 1:Cause you have Voldemort on one side. Yep. And then some type of X Men. The video got a little small for me, so I can't see.
Speaker 3:So we have we have Voldemort from Harry Potter series. We have Medusa from Greek mythology. Obviously, have Thanos.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay.
Speaker 3:And then next to Thanos is Doctor Octopus. And then there's a few others and adjacent to this wall. So you're right. We do get to kind of create the we we don't do it personally. We give the idea, and then we have this this master graffiti artist named Totem, who is literally world renowned, awesome, awesome dude.
Speaker 3:He takes our he takes our our dreams and puts it into spray paint form. Mhmm. So so when they gave me this room, they decided, okay, what you what do you wanna do? What do you wanna have on there? And I was struggling for a while, but I realized, you know what?
Speaker 3:One of the most common literary motifs there are is good versus evil. So I was like, I'm gonna I'm gonna pick my favorite good guys from books and I'm gonna pick my favorite bad guys from books and I'm gonna have them on adjacent walls. And if you could see, could see Thanos is kind of wrestling with pages of a book. If you could see Doctor Octopus' other hand, he's messing with pages as well. And then again, on the other side where I have Harry Potter, Katniss Everdeen, Black Panther, Goku, they're all like ready to ready to squabble with books in their hands and pages.
Speaker 3:So it's it it really he he did a really good job of capturing what what I imagined in my mind. So I get to walk into this every day, and it's incredible and a blessing.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. I'm definitely gonna come back to that because I think it just shows a lot of you know, we may not always think about reading as comic books or things, at least when I was growing up, was like comic books are bad, but I I don't wanna stop there yet. I wanna get into you actually real quick. I have some statistics. I'm not entirely sure how I'm gonna do this.
Speaker 1:Corey, you may know some of this. I don't know. I'm thinking, Liz, I'm not trying to pick on you or be cruel.
Speaker 2:I don't know.
Speaker 1:But you may not know. No. But just get into why maybe we've heard of literacy and reading in the news. It's kind of been this science of reading why we're talking about it a whole lot. I believe this is from 2025, Pretty early this current from the NAEP.
Speaker 1:I forget what that
Speaker 3:stands National Association of Educational Progress.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Corey. Thank you. I meant to write it down, but I didn't. What percentage of fourth graders do you think are reading below a basic level?
Speaker 2:I wanna I unfortunately want to go high. Thirty eight percent.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Is that
Speaker 1:Corey, do you know the answer to this?
Speaker 3:It's it's under last time I checked, I thought it was under 40. It was been 40 for the longest time, and I think it is in the thirties at this point. Am I wrong?
Speaker 1:So I do have it's 40%. Was 40% of fourth graders are working below the basic level.
Speaker 3:Oh, and that's Liz, that's not high. That's incredibly low. Oh.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay.
Speaker 3:That's that's it's I'm not a math guy, but that's an incredibly low number.
Speaker 1:Okay. 40% are working below. So Oh, wow. Okay. There's that many who who are reading below the national level.
Speaker 1:And about a third of eighth graders nationwide are failing to hit even the basic benchmark at eighth grade Wow. For reading. Now, let's put that into just a little bit of a different perspective. I think this one's for from 2024, but it's really relatively close, which is 69 or more than two in three of our nation's fourth graders are reading below proficiency levels. So nearly 70% are below just proficiency.
Speaker 1:Two in five of our fourth graders are reading below the most basic level. Just kinda just understanding reading. Those those are the kind of statistics that we hear a lot in in news or I think kind of alarm educators all over about reading and proficiency. And so, Corey, my question, I guess, you right now is, one, just why do you think those numbers are where they are?
Speaker 3:Yeah. And it's a it's a it's a complex question, but I'll try to answer it probably maybe in the simplest form that I can. I I guess it has to deal with kinda just the misguided nature of how instruction has been as it relates to reading for the past probably ever since I mean, before I got in the game. So mean, I started teaching in 2010, I think. But even prior to that, there was a there was a massive shift in the the late eighties, early nineties that trickled on into the February to where our approach to reading instruction didn't really align with what the science would say about it.
Speaker 3:And and I'm not a a slanderer of any sort. I like to believe that these literacy gurus at the time were they really had the best interest of kids. They just I don't know. I I don't show I don't wanna make excuses for them, but I'm also not
Speaker 1:gonna do the best that they can.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Like We
Speaker 1:don't have all the information. I get that. I understand.
Speaker 3:I just find it hard to believe that somebody would go out and say, let's try to make kids not be better readers. Like, their their intentions were good. Maybe they didn't do the due diligence that was that is expected of of somebody who would claim to be a literacy leader. So the the numbers with the way we approach reading for the past thirty, forty years has been kinda misguided a little bit in terms of what we were following, the type of curriculums that schools were adopting, the approaches to reading. Although I love putting books in front of kids, the way that it was purported for a long time was just put a lot of books in front of kids and they'll just kind of magically learn kind of how to read and and the science just just doesn't prove that.
Speaker 3:And with any type of instruction, no matter how we feel emotionally about it, we have to be ready to abandon poor instructional practices in lieu of what ones that would align with what the science would tell you. This is how kids learn how to read.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Do you see any outside contributing factors to kids either not pursuing reading as something to fill their time or things outside of school that might be contributing to low literacy scores?
Speaker 3:I mean, sure. The environment that you grew up in is tantamount to to your desire of even wanting to read at all. There's a number of factors at play. Obviously, if you grew up in an area where it's a what is called a book desert where there's no library or any books in your home, obviously, access is gonna be incredibly limited, which is incredibly unfortunate. So that's a that's a major issue.
Speaker 3:Another issue is and people may not love me for this, but it's technology. Putting technology in front of kids and as because even the even the best intended apps where it's like, this is the app that's gonna help your kids stimulate their brain cells and da da da da da. We're really putting kids in a position to to struggle when they get to school because if you can imagine fresh out the womb, you put a iPad in front of this kid for five years before they go to kindergarten. And for five years, they've been entertained by flashing, moving pictures, singing.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Speaker 3:And then all of a sudden you say, okay, you gotta sit and look at this page that doesn't have any doesn't have moving pictures. It's gonna be it's gonna be very difficult for them to to to focus on that when they've been wowed for the past years with technology. So I think that's a it's a big big issue that it's being talked about now, but I don't think it's talked about enough. I think it's a huge obstacle in the way of helping kids develop the desire. And I think the last one that I'll share is that we don't read enough aloud to our kids.
Speaker 3:I think we don't see it as a valuable even in teacher world, we don't do it enough in the classrooms in my in my opinion. But even in the home setting, I I think it's it's really important for kids to see not only their moms because they're the traditional the mom is the one that does the reading, which is which is not a good thing or a bad thing, but I think it's incredible to or it's important for kids to to see their father read to them or their grandfather or their stepfather or whoever one of the care whoever the caretakers are, the more adults that they see reading aloud to them, a, they're gonna value it because they're enjoying the story, but it's also gonna create like this this image and this this desire in their mind of, oh, yeah. Reading is a positive thing. I remember sitting on grandpa's lap every Thursday night when he babysat us for five years. He read all these books to us, and it's just associating that positive feeling with reading.
Speaker 3:It really helps put kids in a position to to have a desire to not only learn, but enjoy reading as soon as they become school age.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Wow. You got
Speaker 2:No. Was just thinking about it in a completely different way because I was like, these kids, Yeah. I I'm even thinking of myself where my tendency is not to pick up a book at the end of the day, even though I've looked at a computer screen all day. It's to turn on the TV or scroll on my phone. And I was just thinking about lately when I was trying to get more into reading, I was reading the Harry Potter books.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. Definitely such a fun series to read. And I remember I would get even though the story is amazing, it's immaculate, but I was like, I'm getting so bored just looking at something that's so it looks so visually boring, you know? And I was like, oh my gosh, these kids just from such an early age are just being so indoctrinated with screens and screens and screens. I was like, wow.
Speaker 2:I just didn't even think about that emotional piece of where they're what's the word? Like they're being not conditioned maybe, but having like a such a a
Speaker 3:positive association with it. Yeah. That's all it is. Didn't think
Speaker 2:that would be a thing. Wow.
Speaker 3:It's not talked about enough. I told some people long time ago, I'm like, man, said, I wonder if after teaching or something on this, I don't even know if it'd be something just to, it could be a salary or get paid for, but be somebody who goes into like hospitals when kids are being born and just having a conversation with the parents like, here's some statistics. Here here's the recent most nape statistics, but we can we got things. We know what we could do to fix this thing. And one of the biggest things I'm not asking you to be a teacher.
Speaker 3:I'm not asking you to be an instructor. I'm just asking you, here's here's a a book pack of 10 books that you can have for free, but you want to start just reading aloud to your child. And the benefits are, you can't do anything to circumvent those benefits because they're just the positive association. They're learning concepts of print kind of inherently. Oh, we read left to right.
Speaker 3:Oh, there's page numbers. Oh, this picture goes with this. Oh, okay. There's just so many benefits to it. That is just something that I I had a a strong desire.
Speaker 3:I'm like, man, just people got people gotta know this stuff. It's so easy. Like, it doesn't it doesn't even cost any money.
Speaker 1:It doesn't cost anything. It's easy to do.
Speaker 3:We could put our kids in a really good position when they are five and six years old. It is you don't gotta really buy I mean, if you gotta buy books, but even if you can't, the library or there should be programs for for Head Start and stuff where people have access even in the most dire situations there could be that there's always access to text. But not only access, the parents gotta know and value the importance of the of reading aloud to a child.
Speaker 1:Right. Corey, what I'm trying to figure out exactly how how to ask this question. Why is reading and literacy such a big metric in how well education is going? I think maybe that's the way I want to ask that question. It seems like we put a lot of weight on those scores.
Speaker 1:It's like math and reading. Yep. So since we're talking about reading, why is reading seen as this big indicator of how education is?
Speaker 3:I think reading is it is let me say a couple of things. So reading is the one thing that is certainly gonna transpire every no matter what vocation you're in, there's gonna be some element of of literacy. Now literacy being even when you were introing, where you were where you were talking to Liz earlier, you were saying, well, I was kind of reading comic books and I could tell Piper by your voice at the time, people were telling you that that's not real reading. Right?
Speaker 1:Real reading. That's exactly what it was. Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's it's prose. It's it's just that the boring letters on the page with no no visual representation at all. That's not what literacy is is a is a massive construct that that transcends just the classroom. Right? If you're a doctor, you're probably reading medical journals because that's something that's of interest, a, to you, but it's also gonna make you put you in a better position to do your job, better.
Speaker 3:If you're a lawyer, you have to read. You're if you're a mechanic, if you have to read. If you work if you're the the ice cream machine fixer at McDonald's, right, there's probably some manual that you have to follow. So literacy transcends literally every piece of life for really everybody. So I think that's why it's probably one of the most important things that are going that's why the metric is so heavily weighted.
Speaker 3:And that now I say all that is, again, because although reading and math are kind of like the two go tos, what everybody talks about, it pains me because those tests are largely predicated on instruction that's happening in other classrooms. I don't think science teachers and I don't think social studies teachers get enough credit for the work that they do because, again, there's no social studies there's no massive social studies test that they're gonna take that's gonna be reflected in the NAEP scores. Yeah. And the same kinda goes with science. And what we've seen, we've seen an unfortunate shift in instructional time delegated to we need more reading and math time.
Speaker 3:Now I'm a reading teacher. I'll take all the reading time that I can get, but I'd be a darn fool to think that the reading that they do in science, the literacy skills that they develop in science, that the literacy skills they develop in history, they're going to put them in a better position to be better readers in my class and vice versa. So it's although reading is kind of like, Oh, what's the reading score? It's okay, how are we collectively going to help this? Because large in part, a lot of the passages on standardized tests are science based or social studies based.
Speaker 3:So it's kind of like this, it's not an I versus you thing, it's a we thing. And we need to first understand that we are all on this page together, helping these kids develop these literacy skills. And if we're gonna if we're gonna move the needle, we have to understand that and put pedagogical practices in in play that are gonna put our kids in a position to be successful readers and writers.
Speaker 1:Right. So what I'm hearing is that literacy I mean, it makes a lot of sense, but I just wanted to kinda get to this point of, like, literacy is not just a single person problem in a school system.
Speaker 3:Nope.
Speaker 1:That it's all subjects from I mean, from gym to
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Lunch
Speaker 1:even. I mean, there's menus. You gotta read the menus and understand what's going on. That's true. But into science, into history, math, that it's kind of a big deal because if you can't read, you can't perform well in those other subjects.
Speaker 1:Is that kind of what you're saying? Or am I putting words No. In your
Speaker 3:In life. I mean, I think it transcends school in general. Right? It doesn't matter how far you go in school. And there's a lot of correlates between people who struggle with literate, like who are illiterate.
Speaker 3:And I mean, if you pull and there's a lot of there's research out there on this. I mean, you take a look at the numbers, the statistics behind the reading levels of people in jail or people that are incarcerated, there's a very common thread that, okay, their literacy skills don't go past the fourth grade. And it's like, man, I wonder if they had the solid instruction and they had it all the way through, would they be in a position that they found themselves in? Because knowledge is power, knowledge is freeing. When you don't know, when you don't have knowledge, you defer to what you do know.
Speaker 3:And that's why we see the situations that we see in, and that's just a small subsection of the population, but it is a people group that we do need to talk about because if to do reform of any sort, we're going to reform this world, this nation, we got to put our kids in a position to be successful readers, writers, orators, and there's science out there that tells us how to do it. We just need to to, a, learn it and and implement it in our instruction.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that was a perfect seg I'm sorry. What?
Speaker 2:No. Was like, that's heartbreaking. Sorry. That just made me sad.
Speaker 1:But well, I was just gonna say that I think this is a perfect segue for us to take just, take our break for a second and then get into some of that science of how we can help, as as educators, just everyone in a school system, and look at some of the practical things that we can do to increase literacy to help our students. So listeners, hang out for a minute, and we'll be right back. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Innovative Schools podcast. Jordan here with Liz and Corey Collins, and we're talking about literacy and just the conversation just started with kinda like the state, I guess, of literacy in schools, of reading levels and things like that.
Speaker 1:Talked a little bit about Corey's journey into education and where he kinda got his love of reading. But one of the things we wanna turn into now is we've kind of painted this dark picture, in my mind, this is the way I kinda see it, of here's all kinda what's going on right now. It's not looking good. It's kinda bleak. But that's not what this podcast is about.
Speaker 1:This podcast is about providing tools and strategies and things to you guys, the educators in the world. And so that's where we're gonna turn into next. Right before we went on the break, Corey, you talked about there's science that we know that shows how to help with this. Can you just explain a little bit more about what that science is and a little bit of what we've learned from it?
Speaker 3:Sure. So at this point, probably everybody listening to this has heard of the term science of reading. It's I I don't wanna say it's fairly new. It's probably fairly new to a lot of people. But what it is in a nutshell is this massive cache of research that, and this is the probably the most beautiful thing about it to me because in a world where we're like divisive on everything, you say it's black, I say it's white, or you say it's green, I say it's blue.
Speaker 3:It's the only research that I've ever seen in my entire existence of being a teacher where multiple people from multiple fields have concluded that this is the way that the brain and all kids learn to read. So, I mean, we're talking about, and this is, it's people from different fields, right? That done the scientific research and have loads and years of evidence behind it to where it's teachers and psychologists and cognitive neuroscientists, those are all brain people.
Speaker 1:It's all over everyone.
Speaker 3:It's literally all of these people got together in their respected fields and have done the research and have come together and said, this is what it is. This is what the research says and how kids best learn to read. Now these aren't teachers, so sometimes there's this great chasm between what research says and what instructional practice may look like. So this whole science of reading thing is to kind of taken an education is super guilty of pendulum swings in over the course of time. Like if you've been in the game for fifteen or twenty plus years, you would have seen multiple shifts probably happen in a way the instructional approaches have been put forward.
Speaker 3:This is not a pendulum shift. This is not a feeling. This is stuff that has been around for a long time that really has just started making its headway into the educational space. And I'm incredibly thankful for that. But some cautionary tales when you start talking about the science of reading is that it's not like, it's not something you go buy, right?
Speaker 3:It's not a particular curriculum that is the science of reading. The science of reading is research. And if we're going to put those practices into place, we have to first read and understand what the research is saying and then allow that to guide how our instruction looks. And that's the major caveat because curriculum companies left and right and book publishers are gonna just put a fancy science of reading stamp on their curriculum and purporting it as this is science of reading, but there is no this is science of reading. It's it's a it's research.
Speaker 3:It's knowledge that will help move that educational needle.
Speaker 1:Got it. So there's this thing of the science of reading. It's not just like a curriculum or anything. But on a basic level, what are a few things that it says that, I guess, in education or how me ask you this way. How have you taken this research of the science of reading and incorporated it into how you instruct reading in your classroom?
Speaker 1:So
Speaker 3:I think I was first I didn't have the terminology behind it, but I've always been a fan of, like, reading. So my master's degree is actually in reading education. And for my adult journey, that's what started like this insatiable desire for knowledge. And and I saw a long time ago when I first started the program, was like, man, reading is so, so, so important. I need to be the best person possible for those 25 kids that are sitting in front of me every single day.
Speaker 3:I need to know every single thing that I can and how to and how it's gonna facilitate real learning in my classroom. And so that kind of started my journey. And as I started to read through some of the journals and the articles and the webinars, I started to try to focus on different pieces and add different because adding it all in one take is going to be insanely difficult for anybody. So I first think started with a major piece of the puzzle. And I talked about this in my AccuEd course, vocabulary being an incredibly important piece that I think is not oft talked about as much as it should be.
Speaker 3:Because if we're talking about easing the accessibility of texts, when you start to think about factors that are quantifiable that make those texts hard to access, what is it? Well, it's words. The more words you know, only the better reader you're gonna be, better writer you're gonna be, the better orator that you're going to be. So I've always been in love with words for some reason because probably because I just like to argue. You can ask my wife if she is not on this podcast and we will not be having her.
Speaker 3:But nonetheless, I saw the importance of words a long time ago. So when I started coming across and reading the science behind what makes reading stick and vocabulary was a huge piece of it, it just made me incredibly even all the more excited to learn how to best utilize instructional practices that reflect what the scholarship is going to say about the reading, but put it in practical ways for my students to actually not only fall in love with words, but help word learning stick.
Speaker 1:What is what is one of the things you do in your classroom for vocabulary then specifically to to help your students grow their vocabulary. Yeah. Just grow their vocabulary. I don't know where else I was gonna go with that.
Speaker 3:I know what you're I know what you're saying. It's a it's a it's definitely a multi tiered approach. And again, one of my favorite things one of the things that I get to do at the Ron Clark Academy is that we have around each year 15,000 teachers that come through our doors. I think we're a professional development school in addition to being a school for children. So we open our doors to educators from all over the world to come in and they get to watch.
Speaker 3:And this is the most unique thing about our professional development is we're the only professional development that has live demonstration lessons with, like, real kids. So Jordan, you you so tomorrow we have several 100 teachers coming from all over the world Wow. To watch they they will walk into my classroom and sit in these blue seats behind me and watch me teach a a live lesson, and they will travel to other classes to see that as well. And one of the things that I like to help them understand is like, okay, it's word. You gotta you gotta teach words.
Speaker 3:So explicit instruction of vocabulary. That's kind of I hate to say it like I made up this this approach, this routine, but we're very explicit with our instruction here as it relates to vocabulary. So there's five pieces to it that that help make the routine be a routine, but it helps make the learning stick for the kids. And it's it's I I say the word that gets repeated after me they can hear how to pronounce it. I usually have a dictionary definition up on the board and I have to pause to say that I can't stand your traditional dictionaries.
Speaker 3:Because Liz, if you look up a word in the dictionary as an adult, what's one thing that you have to do? You and this is as an adult, we have to look up words in that definition, right, to try to help us figure out this word over here. And we've looked up x amount of words now, but we don't know word one better than when we first started. True. A lot of lamenting about dictionaries, and and I I definitely have a lot more to say about them.
Speaker 3:But I I I provide a kid friendly definition that allows the kids to focus on what that word means. And it's it's that it's a very crucial piece to it. I usually share a visual representation of it, of the of the word. And it's probably what it's one of my favorite parts to do because I tell educators all the time, like, kids, they like to spill the the they we they call it the tea. They wanna spill all the tea.
Speaker 3:Yep. So I'll use that tea. If there's a word that fits the tea, oh, I will find an image that fits.
Speaker 1:I like the I like
Speaker 3:the t It's one of those it's one of those little things. It's a a little shift that teachers can make that you have to know your kids. Right? You gotta know what's kinda going on. Mhmm.
Speaker 3:But it it just helps. It it gets the kids excited when they see something that relates to them. And it doesn't matter what it is. It's when they feel seen and they feel connected, they're gonna they're gonna be more apt to to get this information from you. So those are just a couple things.
Speaker 3:That's just three parts of the routine that I do. Now I will say explicit instruction is not the number one way to increase word learning and get because we can only teach x amount of words per year. Right?
Speaker 1:So
Speaker 3:we have to put other other constructs in place to help the kids actually pick up all the words that they need to learn. And statistically speaking, three to 4,000 words they have to learn per year. And that's from kindergarten all the way to twelfth grade if they're gonna be college and career ready.
Speaker 1:Yeah. My gosh. The thing that I caught on to in what I was thinking about when you're talking about your approach and at least those three three parts of what you do, is you're you're hitting the students not just in one way. Like, you're saying it so they're hearing it. You're writing on the board so they're reading it.
Speaker 1:And then you're attaching it to some other visual prompt for for them to reference back to. Not just like, you know, it sounds like it's not just like a picture of an apple. Right? You're like, oh, we're looking at the word apple. Hopefully, most kids know, but they may not.
Speaker 1:But, you know, whatever. It's a picture of an apple, but you're doing it in a creative way to kinda trigger that that memory in them. And it's it's interesting just for me personally right now is I was helping my daughter with spelling last night, and she was we were going through her spelling words, and she was spelling them out. And she'd draw little pictures next to each word. And I I never I didn't get a chance to ask her what those were.
Speaker 1:Long story short, our power went out last night, So that threw everything in the crazy town. But she had these little pictures. And I was like, what are you doing? She's like, oh, these little pictures that associate to the word. I was like, is that something your teacher told you to do?
Speaker 1:And she's like, no, I just find it fun. But she is like associating the word with this little picture to help her kinda remember things about it. But that was just the kind takeaway I took from what you're just saying of you're not just saying, here's the word. Here's what
Speaker 3:it is. Write write the definition down five times each. No. It's that's I actually I call that educational malpractice when teachers approach it like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And and I don't use the word lightly. But there's just again, if if we're gonna move the needle, if we're gonna increase those NAEP scores to where they need to be and that and those those NAEP scores aren't the end all be all. That's just our nation's report card. And it's just a it it just kinda puts us in a position to know kinda where our kids are approximate. But if we're gonna move it, that's that's where we gotta start to to do this stuff intentionally.
Speaker 3:Right? That your your nine year old eight how old is your daughter?
Speaker 1:She's eight.
Speaker 3:Eight. Your eight year old daughter knew this is fun. I I like this. And so she was making connections. Another piece to the whole puzzle along those lines of hitting trying to hit the the the mind in just different ways is I also this and is the kid's favorite part of the whole thing is I attach a a kinesthetic movement to every single word I teach.
Speaker 3:So literally every word that I will teach this school year, there's a a gesture that goes along with it. And it's it's the kid's favorite part. It's my favorite part because the rule is that whenever for the rest of your life, you hear this word, your responsibility is to do the gesture. You you can imagine, oh, it's the incredible piece. It it it's fun, but the real goal of of its utilization is it's gonna help them make the word stick a lot more because Yeah.
Speaker 3:If they're doing this every time, frantic for the word frantic.
Speaker 1:He he just waved his hands around next to his head. You need to just go check the video out. Sorry. If you're listening this audio, like, just on audio, you're missing so much right now. Just go back and watch the hands wave, but I like it.
Speaker 3:And I'm telling you, if if a student walked in right now that I had taught that word to, they would do that gesture right now. Not I wouldn't have to say anything about it. I would just say frantic, and they would go, frantic. Or I would say, variety. They'd be like, oh, variety.
Speaker 3:So there's always some type of movement attached. And and I'm telling you, Liz, it it's it's really incredible to see the kids recall of the words. Because that's the that's the important piece. Like, it's fun. We're moving.
Speaker 3:We're we're we're loud. We're breathing. We're getting blood flowing, which is awesome. But that stuff is it's cool. But if there's not educational value to it, then what's what's the point?
Speaker 3:Right?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:It's all those things.
Speaker 1:Hook you need to meet and everything else
Speaker 3:is it too. And and I I can call I mean, if a kid I teach fourth and fifth grade here at the Ron Clark Academy. I can have a a sixth, seventh, or eighth grader come in right now who I haven't seen in a year, two, or three years Mhmm. And start to say a bunch of random words that I've taught them. And I would I would bet that it it they would be able to recall the gesture.
Speaker 3:Because and the goal is, again, this stuff is fun, but when they come across frantic in a text, I never want them to think, okay, oh, wait, have I learned that word before? What's that word? Is there a meaning? Did I write that five times? No.
Speaker 3:Because we want their attention to stay on the text. Working memory gets spent really fast, and that's usually why kids can't comprehend whatever is in front of them because they're doing so many other things while they're trying to read. And if we can teach them words and we can teach them other word learning strategies, this gesture piece, when they see it and they go like this, they're going to remember that it means wild or crazy or or something that I'm out of sorts. And then it could stay keep their attention on what's gonna come next in the text. So it's it's actually helping save that cognitive capacity for when it's really necessary, but it helps ease the transition to comprehension as they're reading the text.
Speaker 3:So it's it's really important stuff. Like I said, it's fun. The kids enjoy it. We're moving, but there is that that that value piece to it.
Speaker 1:I would have retained so many more words if that if I had to I go with have two side note questions. Is one, are tests just a dance party of kids sitting in their seats waving their arms around as they're trying to remember things?
Speaker 3:So the really there's two there's two pieces to that, and it's really fun. A, when they are taking a test or they're reading so after I instruct the words, I always have a connected passage that has all the words in it so they can see how the words because that model is is good. It's it's it's really good.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:But if that was all you did, that wouldn't be enough because teaching teaching words in isolation is not is not the move. There's no research that aligns with that. One of the most important pieces of vocabulary instruction is that connected text. Right? A text that has all the words in it so they can see how the words function in real life.
Speaker 3:And there's a number of ways you can go about that. If your curriculum has it, obviously, that's a great way to go. But utilizing AI nowadays will put kids in a position to be able to to see those words in authentic settings because you throw in a a chat GPT or a magic school AI and say, I just need a paragraph on whatever topic you want. Just make sure these 12 words are in it. And it gives you an authentic setting to where how the kids can see the words.
Speaker 3:And the other piece is if you'll see them reading something in here because I'm a huge independent reading guy, like I'm books in hands, books in hands. Kids gotta be reading every single if anybody hears anything from this entire podcast, kids need to be reading every single day. It's a muscle that must be flexed. We can instruct until we're blue in the face, but if kids aren't reading volumes of text, the we're not gonna move the needle like we should. But when they're reading, you'll see a kid go.
Speaker 1:Again, if you're just listening, you missed all of that. Just go back and watch. There's hand movements and gestures as they're reading.
Speaker 3:They do it all the time. All the time. In fact, I used to get in trouble here at the school because the kids, I mean, they love this stuff. They really love it. They'll go to other classrooms and a teacher will be teaching and they'll say, let's say the word ambush, like we're in a history class.
Speaker 3:Right? And I teach the word ambush and if again, if you're listening, you won't see it. But the the gesture for ambush is kinda like He a
Speaker 1:pushed his chair back.
Speaker 3:Ambush. And that's kinda
Speaker 1:what it is.
Speaker 3:So you you can imagine our social studies teacher when they're talking about some war where an ambush was a tactic that was employed, all the kids. So the teacher doesn't know I taught that word. So they'd be like, oh, so in this war, the people, they tried to hide behind all these things and they what they wanted to do is they wanted to create an ambush and the kids will go, ambush. And the teacher's like, oh, what are you guys what are you guys So it's a it's kinda like my hallmark here at the school and That's awesome. They either hate it or hate it.
Speaker 3:So
Speaker 1:No. That's great. My second question was, do you just see kids at the lunch table not talking and just doing hand gestures to each other to that was gonna be my my next one. But
Speaker 3:I swear it's they they take such great ownership of it. And that's that's the fun part. That's the best part of education. Right? When the kids have ownership in it as well.
Speaker 3:Because sometimes they'll help me come up with gestures that I couldn't think of. And you'll see a kid like somebody will say a word and they'll be like like, bump them. Like, hey. Hey. You so they hold each other accountable, which is which is fun.
Speaker 3:So it's it's a it's a lot of fun. The kids really enjoy it.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's good. I wanted to jump back for a second to you're saying other teachers in the school. At least your example is kind of like a funny the other people not kinda knowing what's going on. But I imagine that if you can get more teachers in the whole school in on this I mean, vocabulary words that you're teaching in your in your reading classes are gonna be different than vocabulary that you you need to know in science or in history. But those same things of doing the gestures or saying it, putting it on the board, tying it to a current event or something that's going on in their world, that's where literacy starts to grow up across the board because you're approaching it as a team and not just putting it all on the reading teacher or language arts teacher or something like that.
Speaker 3:Jordan, it's really brilliant. And it's something that I joked earlier and said like, oh, they hate, but we have And I would encourage any school to do this, especially when you have like teams of teachers. So the art teacher and the science teacher here at the school, Ms. Wallace and Mr. Harden, when I first started doing this, it was kind of funny and it was funny messing with the other teachers because they would know what words I taught because the kids are doing these gestures.
Speaker 3:But then there were some words that kinda, and you hit some research on the head because in a reading classroom, you're right. I'm not gonna teach math words. I'm not gonna teach art words. I'm not gonna teach science words. Like I just don't have the time to be able to do all the words.
Speaker 3:That's why word learning strategies is a really important piece. Maybe we'll talk about that before the end of this podcast. But you're right, they do have a responsibility because as the art teacher, you want your kids speaking, thinking, acting, and writing like who? Like artists. They there's a specific discourse that that guides the art community, the art realm.
Speaker 3:And the same thing goes for the science community and the the math community as well. So there should be that inherent desire for them to teach those words. So you're you're you're spot on about it. But sometimes there's words that kinda go they're they're multiple shades to where they can mean similar things or different things in different contexts.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So we we came to an agreement a couple years ago where like a word like reflect. Right? So that was my gesture for reflect. It was kind of like a bouncing off the palm of my hand.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 3:And I remember the kids came back, they would come back from science class or something and I said the word reflect and they did this for reflect. And it was a totally different gesture. I'm like, I know I didn't teach you that. And I was like, what is that? Did you just make that up?
Speaker 3:They're like, well, no, Mr. Hardin, we're talking about reflection in some way, shape or form. And I can't remember what content he was teaching. And taught us this as the gesture. So I was like, Oh yeah, good.
Speaker 3:He's teaching vocab. He's attaching gestures to it. It's good. I said, But this is I said, Mr. Harden, I said, Hey, so you teach reflect?
Speaker 3:He's like, Yeah, yeah, was doing this. He's like, and I said, well, this is how I do it. I was like, what do you think about just doing what I say and we'll move forward? And he's my boy. So he was like, nah.
Speaker 3:Nah. For sure. So so we agreed that this was reflect. So, again, the more they're doing that, and now they're seeing it in a multitude of contexts, and I could share examples with the art teacher as well, there there there's more touches. There's gonna be more touches of the word, and they're gonna see how it functions in different worlds, different contexts.
Speaker 3:And, ultimately, the goal is that that word becomes part of their their long term vocabulary.
Speaker 1:Yeah. This is all great. Liz, are you you keeping up? You're being a little quiet over there.
Speaker 2:I no. Honestly, I was think realizing I was getting really quiet, but I was like, I'm learning so much that I'm like, oh my gosh. My brain is just like, it's just it's getting full. But wow. My gosh.
Speaker 3:Well, if you want your mind blown, Liz, that that's just teaching of words. Right? That's just explicit instruction. Like I said, it's it's incredible and must be done in every single school and every single classroom, every single context. Mhmm.
Speaker 3:But the most bang for your buck this and has kind of been my passion as it relates to words over the past, probably year plus now, it's a term called, morphological instruction. Morphology, what morpheme is, it's the smallest unit of language that contains meaning. So you would probably that's teacher talk, but you would probably know it as like prefixes
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:Okay. Greek and Latin roots and and suffixes.
Speaker 1:Thank you for helping me with that.
Speaker 3:Right. I just wanna make sure that we're all on the same page. I I know you two aren't educators, but what I'm what I'm getting ready to share with you will make perfect sense if since you have that context now. So we would teach a couple of prefixes and a couple of suffixes in those early grades. You know anything about our language, a lot of it is derived from Greek and Latin backgrounds, right?
Speaker 3:We have Anglo Saxon words as well, and there's some that are French and Germanic. But one major issue that I think is kind of put like a dampening on word learning is that we tell kids, and you might've even thought this, Jordan, with your daughter, that our English language, because you probably heard somebody say it or you thought it is so dumb. Our English language makes no sense. It's the stupidest language in the world. There's just all these silent letters and the pronunciations are weird and there's
Speaker 1:There, there, there. Trust me growing up, it was a pain point for me. Hard.
Speaker 3:And it's just like, we will lie to children and to people and say, you just got to kind of know what how to spell that word. And that's not really what spelling is. We have, as educators, misconstrued what spelling is as a it's supposed to be a and I'm gonna use teacher talking, but I'll explain it to you. A phoneme grapheme representation and all that is is sound a letter. Right?
Speaker 3:Every sound should have a letter attached to it, but you know that works with like cat. Right? But when you start getting those other words that they have two letters that represent one sound like in church, right? That's CH, that's two letters that represent one sound. It starts to get kind of funky.
Speaker 3:And especially when it comes to spelling, when we treat spelling like that, we're going to put our kids in a position to not be as successful as they could because, really, spelling's main job is to convey the meaning of the word. That's that's the primary purpose of spelling, and that's something that I think we've made an error on in in our understanding. I use this example a lot, and and, Liz, this is where I think your mind's gonna be blown. Let's let's take
Speaker 1:I'm ready.
Speaker 3:Let's take a let's take a word like the word sign. Right? Sign. Sign is spelled s I g n. Right?
Speaker 3:K. More teacher talk. The orthographic denotation of what sign means, it it's s it's this essence of the word. The essence of the word sign is to mark. You mark something.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:So Jordan and Liz, give me some words that have the letters s I g n that you know from just you know in your mind.
Speaker 2:Design?
Speaker 3:Design?
Speaker 1:Signage.
Speaker 3:Signage?
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 3:Oh, you you know you're just you're limiting yourself to pronunciation.
Speaker 1:You're right. I am. Yeah.
Speaker 3:What what when you gotta when you gotta sign a contract, what do you do? What do you put in
Speaker 1:your signature?
Speaker 3:Your signature. When you're at a stop sign or a stoplight, what what does that do for you? It's a it's a signal, insignia, signify. So you see how you limited yourself? My question to you in all those words that we just said, signature, signify, insignia, signal, design, how do you spell the main part of that word in all those words that we just said?
Speaker 3:S I G N. Right? So the reason I share that is because sign, we think it's the dumbest word in the world because that that stupid that dumb that g is so stupid. Why is that g there? It makes no sense.
Speaker 3:Well, in the context of looking all these words that are related to what sign means, that G has to be there so we know that all those words have to do with marking something. Because every single one we did has to do with marking. So that G is an anchor in that word to remind us that, you know what, even though the pronunciation shifted from sign to Sig and all those hard G words, they're all going to be connected to sign every single time. Same thing with cave, cave and cav, Right? Cave, you know what a cave is, but it has a history and orthographic denotation meaning hollow, to hollow.
Speaker 3:Right? So what C A V words do we know? Well, let's see. If you go into this dark area, in a rock, in a mountain side of a mountain, you'd call that a cave. Right?
Speaker 3:What if you go to the dentist and they have to dig a hole in your tooth?
Speaker 1:A cavity.
Speaker 3:Cavity. What's the big machine called that actually digs holes out of the ground and out of the sides of mountains?
Speaker 1:Like an excavator?
Speaker 3:An excavator.
Speaker 1:I was so lucky to be scared.
Speaker 3:You're you're doing you're doing amazing. You're a great student. In all three of those words, how do you spell because you you said three different a sounds. You said short a, k or cavity. You said long a, cave, and then you said what's called the schwa a in excavator.
Speaker 3:But what is going to remain consistent in every single spelling of those words? C a v. Yeah. In every single word. Why?
Speaker 3:Because spelling's job is to convey meaning. All of those words have to do with hollowing out something. Our English language is incredibly predictable. It's incredibly structural, and it makes perfect sense when you start to look at words through a morphemic lens. When you treat spelling lists like and you probably see you may may have seen this with your daughter, ale.
Speaker 3:Right? All the ale sounding words, pale, sail, scale, male, tail. Well, you and Liz both know it's either a l e or a I l. Right? But if you don't know what a what a scale is or you don't know what a rail is as a as a young kid, how are you gonna differentiate between a l e or a I l?
Speaker 3:There's no way to do it, right, unless you understand how words are structured. So those are just two examples that that I that I think are insane because every single word that you come across can be explained morphologically and will help you not only become a better speller, but this is what's gonna help you gain the most words over the course of your life because you start to understand, well, I know cred, c r e d, means to believe. So anytime I see c r e d, for the most part in a word, what's gonna what's it gonna mean? It's gonna mean to believe. Credit, credentials, credo, credence.
Speaker 3:Oh, wait. But your pronunciation was different. It doesn't matter. Pronunciation can shift, but meaning is always gonna remain consistent every single time. Every single word has an explanation.
Speaker 1:There are so many things I've learned here today. And not just about words, but about all of that. I'm gonna have to go back and re listen to this to No way. To grab it. But Cory's passion and level of nerd about words is the most I've ever seen.
Speaker 1:And it's fantastic. I mean, just
Speaker 3:It's fascinating.
Speaker 1:It really is. And honestly, knowing that I'm someone who very much values wanting to know the why behind things.
Speaker 3:Oh, you would love.
Speaker 1:My really simple in this kind of context, my my simple kind of story about that is phone, spelling phone. I'd you probably know all of the morpho whatever thingies
Speaker 3:that you said.
Speaker 1:Morphemes? You sure? Morphemes? Okay. You know, I was
Speaker 3:like Let let me let me stop you there.
Speaker 1:Oh, gosh. And then
Speaker 3:and then I want you
Speaker 1:to say I want you to
Speaker 3:I want I want you to say whatever you were gonna say after this, but now I want you to look at it through this lens. Phone has a root, p h o n, phon. Right?
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:That means sound. So what now that you know that, what why why is it a phone a phone? Why is it a why is it a telephone? What does a telephone do? Well, tell is a root.
Speaker 3:That means far off.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:Phon means sound. What does a telephone do? It brings sound from somewhere else. Yes. Phonics phonics instruction, which your daughter's probably going through right now, it's the study of the sound Sounds.
Speaker 3:And the written connection to the sound. Every single what else? Headphones. But keep going, you'll you'll see that every time you see p h o n, it has something to do with sound.
Speaker 1:Right. And I think I got I kind of discovered that later in life, just a bit. But when I was a kid, I was like, why is it not just f o n e? You told me the f makes sound, and that's what it should be. But for me, as a kid, just knowing why, being able to look at patterns that way, I probably would be a significantly better speller.
Speaker 3:You would be.
Speaker 1:And be able to acknowledge significant or not ignore it. Acknowledge. Be able to identify and see the meaning in so many more more words. But I feel like we could just talk for another hour, but I'm not sure if people wanna listen to that. But I
Speaker 3:Yeah. They they don't.
Speaker 1:Very much enjoyed this conversation. Yeah. I think it is out of our episodes and I've I love all of our episodes of the podcast, but this has so much information in it. Liz has said, we got I got in the middle of you talking about morphemes Morphemes. Right there.
Speaker 1:Our producer Chad just sent me a he's listening on this. Sent me a text of the head bloating emoji. So many people are learning right now. But Cory, I want to thank you for sharing all of that with us. I think we're definitely going to have to have Corey back on later to talk about more I'm sure he has so much more to talk about with reading.
Speaker 1:But I greatly appreciate you sharing all of that. These are some great things for teachers. We've said it a couple times, not just reading teachers or language arts teachers, but for any subject of teacher to start incorporating in to help our students become more proficient learners and readers. And so I just wanna thank you so much for sharing everything that you have with us today. But if you're a listener and you found something here, I'm pretty sure you did, that is interesting or helpful, I just wanna encourage you to share it with, your colleagues or your friends, your educator friends, so that they can, learn from it as well.
Speaker 1:We don't do this podcast just to have fun. We really wanna help as many educators as possible. That doesn't happen without shares and likes and things like that. So one last time, thank you so much, Corey, for joining us. Thank you, Liz, for being with us.
Speaker 3:Go learn some new words. Here's your last fact about peace.
Speaker 1:Fact with Corey.
Speaker 3:Just because you said it, I had to bring it up. So
Speaker 2:so excited.
Speaker 3:Anytime anytime you see p h Okay. That represents that sound, it's of gree it's of Grecian origin. It's from Greece.
Speaker 1:So it's
Speaker 3:a Greek word. Yep. Cool. And if see some time you see p h, you know that word originated in Greece.
Speaker 1:I know some Greek. Not really. But just in the claim I did.
Speaker 3:It's it's it's all Greek to you now.
Speaker 1:It is. Alright. On that last fun fact, thank you guys for joining us. We'll see you on the next episode of the Innovative Schools podcast.
Speaker 2:Bye, guys.
Speaker 3:Bye, y'all.