Matt speaks with Regie Routman, longtime educator and author of many books, including The Heart-Centered Teacher, for the inaugural episode of Literacy Unscripted. This podcast series challenges traditional approaches to literacy teaching and leadership.
In this professional conversation, Regie and Matt explore the meaning of belonging in schools, the impact of a single teacher, and the crucial difference between curriculum as a conversation versus a rigid script. Listeners will walk away with an appreciation for creating joyful and empowering learning environments for every student.
Key Discussion Points:
The Power of Belonging: Regie and Matt share personal, resonant stories about the first time they felt truly seen and valued by a teacher, highlighting how these moments can alter a person's life trajectory.
Check out Regie’s latest article for MiddleWeb on belonging in schools here.
Beyond the Script: They advocate for professional knowledge over prescriptive curriculum, likening skilled teaching to a chef who can create a masterpiece with limited ingredients by mastering the basics, rather than simply following a recipe.
Celebrating All Strengths: The conversation emphasizes the importance of seeing every individual—from students to bus drivers and cafeteria workers—as a valuable contributor with unique gifts to share, fostering a sense of shared ownership and equity within the school community.
Trust and Autonomy: They discuss the transformative power of giving students genuine agency, citing a real-world example of students managing their school library, which led to increased literacy, empathy, and leadership skills.
Read here for more information about the school library book budget project.
Take care,
Matt
P.S. Join other school leaders and me this October for the first cohort of my new course based on my book Leading Like a C.O.A.C.H. Over four weeks, you will learn key strategies and skills for engaging in coaching conversations that lead to lasting schoolwide literacy excellence. Join the waitlist today to secure your spot for this fall.
Official Transcript
Matt: Welcome to Read by Example. This is a special series called "Literacy Unscripted." So, I'm talking to literacy experts in the field who have pushed back on a prescriptive approach to literacy instruction. And it's very appropriate that my first conversation is with Regie Routman, who I've spoken with multiple times—a colleague, a good friend, just the person I go to whenever I have a question in this regard. So, welcome, Regie.
Regie: Thank you, Matt. It's great to have a conversation with you and not have it be about a technology problem.
Matt: Always happy to help there, too. But you've got an article with MiddleWeb about building a culture of belonging, and I just thought it was very appropriate for this time of year. If I were still a principal, you know, I'm trying to motivate my staff or to help staff kind of take a step back and think about what's really important. I'm looking at one of your articles that you've written in the past. And this one is also so good around belonging in schools. And we were chatting before we hit record about when the first time we felt a sense of belonging in our educational experience. And I thought your story resonated with me. So if you don't mind sharing, Regie.
Regie: You know, I don't. It's a great question, actually, because I think when I think back about when did I feel a sense of belonging, it wasn't until I was an adult and I had attended an International Reading Association conference. I'll tell that story. But when I was went through the grades, I never thought that I was had any kind of special talent. I don't remember forming a close relationship with any teacher K-12 or even in college. Part of that, I think, was that I didn't grow up in an intellectual atmosphere. And my parents were fine with me just going to college and finding a husband. And I did really well in that regard, but they weren't really interested in what I was going to do with my mind. And I hadn't thought that much about it. You and I are very different generations, and you know, my mother didn't work. And so they just thought, well, you know, you'll find a nice husband and you'll be a good cook and a good mother. And I didn't have anybody in... I never had a teacher who said, "You can be more than that," which I think is so important. I never felt even in high school that I belonged with any particular group. I didn't mind. I wasn't a member of the popular club, but I think I didn't know that I was missing that until I went to my first International Reading Association meeting, which was after I was married and had two children. And the only reason I was able to go—I was working as a reading specialist in Shaker Heights, Ohio—was that every seven years they sent the reading specialist, but my term came up because I couldn't have afforded to go.
And I think the thing that was shocking, because I had never been to a national conference or even a local conference, was seeing women intellectually challenged. And I met Marie Clay and seeing what was going on across the world. It was just eye-opening for me. And so I think that was the first time that I felt a sense of belonging. Not initially, because I didn't feel that I was any part of that, but I was so inspired. And I was inspired by leaders. I just have this picture here. This was the person that made me feel that I could belong.
Regie: So he was the father of shared book experience. He at one time was in charge of Scholastic Australia, and he told me that he never should have been in charge of a publishing company because he said he ran them into the ground. I mean, he was great. He was a brilliant literacy professor, and he was just such a kind person. And he saw something in me. He showed up. When I was speaking about belonging, I knew I had to get back to the International Reading Association. I was so stimulated by the people that I met and what was happening all over the world that I didn't have an idea about. I'd been reading about it, but to actually meet the people that were, like Don Holdaway, like Marie Clay, that were making things happen, and that they were so forthcoming and treated me as an equal. And I knew the only way I could get back to the conference, and I was really feeling this sense of, "I want to be part of this," was to get my district to send me. And the only way that that would happen is if I wrote a proposal, which is what I did and got accepted. It took two years. I didn't know how to write a proposal because that's its own genre, right? And so then when I didn't make it, then the next year, and Don Holdaway showed up at my session. I couldn't believe it. He said, "I've come to learn from you." And I'm like, "What are you doing here? I don't know anything yet." And we became close friends, and he became my most important mentor. And I think that was because he wasn't just about literacy. He was all about bringing joy into learning. And nobody was really talking about that then. We're going back many, many years, bringing joy into learning and also the importance of the social-emotional. It was all together. He was teaching in a one-room schoolhouse for kids that were not learning to read well. And he had like K through 8 all in one room together. And he invented the shared book experience where he created a big book and so had the kids gather regardless of their age around. And so they could see the print as he was reading. And it was that whole bedtime experience, very nurturing, very loving, very comforting. And so that was a big deal. And he was at my house, and I brought him into the district, and we really became close friends and colleagues. And I felt that was the first time because I was not... I don't have a PhD. It was the first time I thought, "Well, maybe I could be an influencer. Maybe I could write a book." You know, and then I was encouraged to do that. But not by any of my teachers K-12. It was when I saw, you know, sort of the broader world.
Matt: You had to seek out your own mentors.
Regie: Yeah, I really did. What about you? When was the first time? It's a great question. When did you experience belonging?
Matt: I remember in high school, one of my economics teachers... And I was not like a straight-A student. I wasn't a bad student, but I was, you know, I struggled at times with attention. And I remember my economics teacher said, "Oh, hey, Matt, you're getting an A at the top of the class." And I said, "Oh." And he looked at me, and I was very surprised. And he's like, "Why are you surprised?" And he's like, "That's where you belong." You know, and just that phrase of like, "This is where I expect you to be." And I kind of... It's not the same experience, but a similar experience where I didn't feel like there was a hierarchy between, as much as, you know, as we typically have, between teacher and student. And it sounds like a similar relationship with Don Holdaway. You know, "I had high expectations for you."
Regie: Yeah, I didn't see myself as that smart. Nobody had ever said, and I didn't think about it. But one teacher can do that. My granddaughter, Katie, who graduated college several years ago, had an economics teacher who saw something in her and had her stay after class and say, "You know, Katie, have you considered economics as a field? Don't let those boys in the class that are talking over the girls. Don't let that. You have a good brain. You have a lot to offer." That one teacher caused her... She never thought about economics. She majored in economics, has a degree in economics, and is working in economics. And it was a teacher who saw that, and it was a female teacher encouraging another female. I think women, it's still hard to get the same recognition, unfortunately, that men do, especially if you're a person of color, you know.
Matt: For sure, yeah. It's much harder. It's not an equal playing field.
Regie: I want to say one other thing about belonging. The reason I wrote that article, and Matt, you can put the link up for that because I know that it's made into... It's in PDF... is I was working when my last book came out, The Heart-Centered Teacher, I was working with a school district, Walnut Valley, California Unified School District, and I was so impressed with the way they start each school year with a big theme. And the theme last year was, "You are welcome here." And what surprised me about that, because I'd never seen this before, they did a big welcome day, a couple of days, where everybody was invited, almost like a rally, you know, like we're going to start the year off great and you all belong here. But what was different about it, Matt, was that it wasn't just for teachers. The people that attended were the bus drivers, were the nutrition workers, were the social workers, anybody, the landscape people, anybody that was employed in the district was on equal footing as any teacher or principal or administrator. I'd never seen that before. And it said a lot about equity and what they really believed. And the belief being that each one of us has something to teach a child or see in a child. A bus driver's comment to a child. Somebody in the cafeteria can make that child's day or not, right? But that was very, very powerful to me.
And this year, in fact, I just got an email this morning from the assistant superintendent, and this year their focus is on stories. I forgot what it was now because I just read it one time to you. "Stories always win." The importance of stories in teaching and in learning. And that's what, and I'll just give a plug for my book, my last book, The Heart-Centered Teacher, because they actually bought a copy for all of their staff, which included the bus drivers, the nutrition workers, and whatever, because of the stories. They said, "We like that you were story focused." And it is all about the stories and what kids come to us with and that we can see that. And that... I never felt seen in school, and that's a very big deal. And I think it's not that hard. I don't think it's that hard for a teacher to make every child feel seen.
You know, one of the stories that I tell is the story of Ted, a 54-year-old man that I taught to read during the pandemic. We only had just two phones and no visuals. And I tell that story in The Heart-Centered Teacher. But until I saw who he was, probably he had a label of dyslexia. I don't know what it was. Probably he was in special ed. I never asked him. Probably, well, I know that he couldn't do phonics very well. We didn't start there. Until I could see him and know who he was as a person, I really couldn't teach him. I didn't know how I was going to teach him. So I had to start with recognizing his brilliance, because we all shine in some area, and not seeing him as less than, instead of disabled, "differently abled." He had gifts, and it's really seeing, I think, every child's gifts.
I think the first time my son Peter was seen in elementary school, I can still remember it, going to a teacher's conference, and the teacher saying, "Let's talk about our boy Pete." And it was just like, "Wow." Just like, "I really like this kid." And then he blossomed. That was fifth grade. She saw him. He was very quiet, but a quiet style of leadership that she brought out. And very smart, and she challenged him intellectually. But up until that time, I think he was pretty invisible, you know, because he was quiet, well-behaved, you know.
Matt: I think about the impact just one person can have and how it trickles down to so many other experiences, Don Holdaway empowering you, and that led to so many other districts you worked with, Walnut Valley, and just all the people that you've reached.
Regie: It’s accepting people as they are, not as we wish them to be, which is so hard, right? We know that from being married, from being colleagues, you know, we want people to be the way we want them to be, and that's not our job.
I think one of the things that's really important at this time of the year, at the start of the school year, but true for all year long, is I think one of the ways we create a sense of belonging is that kids feel that this is our school, this is our classroom. That's huge, not just "my classroom." Some of the most beautiful classrooms that I've been in... You can tell right away that this is the teacher's classroom. Every bulletin board is perfect. The commercial charts are up there. Where are the kids? You know, you can tell when it's "our classroom" because the kids' work is everywhere. The charts, the routines, the rules are written with the kids. And kids are different in classrooms like that. They know their voices are valued and that the teacher is not the only teacher in the room, that everybody in this classroom has a lot to teach us.
And, you know, really seeking out what people's strengths are and celebrating them, starting with the first day.
Matt: You just gave so many ways to start day one and beyond in a positive way. You list, you know, in your article, kids need to be safe, cared for, seen, empowered, make their voices heard. And like you said, it happens on day one and then really every day.
Kind of transitions into empowering each kid and giving them some autonomy. And you talk about curriculum as conversation versus like a predetermined script. As you know, we live in very difficult times right now with all the challenges, all the requirements. How do leaders help teachers make this shift to help kids move from compliance, especially at the secondary level where they've kind of gotten used to a diet of just "tell me what I need to do and I'll do it," to genuine ownership in their learning?
And then on the flip side, you know, if you're not lucky enough to work at a building where a leader's, you know, empowering you and trusting you, how do teachers help leaders see the benefits of autonomy, choice, you know, curriculum as conversation, you know, and pushing back on the micromanaging?
Regie: That's all? Sorry. That's the whole ballgame. One of the things before I get into that, I want to be sure to mention your book because that's, I think you deal with that quite a lot, you know. How do we set up a system? How do we set up a structure that is not a binding in terms of confining us despite all of the standards and the rules that we're supposed to follow? And I'm very honored to hold this up because I wrote the... honored to write the foreword. And you do a lot of that in here in terms of how do we... how do you help leaders become coaches rather than... yeah, it's really the essence of that, where you're providing the foundation so that people can shine. I think the rub is that you have to have professional learning going on. The only way that you can take all the requirements and as a very knowledgeable teacher decide, "Yes, I have to teach the science of reading because it's mandated and I don't have a choice, but I can do that in a way where I will be a positive deviant." That's a term from Atul Gawande, who's a surgeon and a writer. And where you're kind of breaking the rules, but in a good way because we're here for the kids. We're not here to be so structured that there's no leeway in how we teach. I think one of the things we have to do, and this only happens if we have a high degree of professional learning, and all of my work is about that.
The professional learning is something that people don't value enough. Even if you're in a school where there's no professional learning going on, you want to find a colleague, even if it's just one colleague, and read professionally and talk about what the research is saying.
And the only way you can get around some of the requirements that don't make any sense... you'll get the high test scores, but not because you followed any particular curriculum, because you really know what you're doing, so that you can, instead of spending a half hour a day on phonics, you could spend 10 minutes a day, because the goal is we want readers. We don't want just "phonicators." We want readers who love to read, who read across genres. And you have to be so knowledgeable. It's like for me, the analogy would be, I'm a really good cook. My husband just told me that today when I fixed lunch. I probably do my best cooking when I have my least amount of resources. I don't have so many choices because then I can really be creative. But I know the basics. I know how to make a sauce. I don't have to read the recipe every time. That framework of teaching reading is in here from all the study that I've done over the years.
So for that adult student that I was working with, I didn't know how I was going to teach him. I knew I would teach him because I know how to teach reading. I have a degree in learning disabilities, teaching students with learning disabilities. And none of that really mattered. The main thing was I had to get to know this child... this adult. And how can I find a way in? That's our job. That's our responsibility. And we had to be very creative about that.
Matt: It's a hard balance sometimes.
Regie: It's a very hard balance. And if you're not knowledgeable, and I think we don't value professional learning enough, if you're not knowledgeable, you're going to be bound by that script, you know. And you have to make it your own. You have to make it uniquely your own.
Matt: I just delivered some professional development. I delivered some PD around, it was co-teaching with teachers. And that was the one thing they said as a critique was, "We didn't have time to practice those skills," you know, so that knowledge is not just that declarative knowledge, but that experiential knowledge.
Regie: And that's why I think that's why it's so important for the principal to be a coach to have that job embedded. And to ease things so that they do have time. There's only so many hours in the day, but it's what you prioritize. It's what you prioritize.
The phonics issue is a whole other thing. And when I was in college, that's all I learned was phonics. I didn't learn anything about teaching reading comprehension because I was in college way before you. I'm a lot older. So I didn't know anything about teaching reading comprehension. You know, I think you have to be a reader yourself. And if you get that, if you are teaching reading well, and you're really focused on what kids are interested in, and you have a classroom library, and Matt, you've written about, and I've included it extensively in my book about how you and Micki Uppena, how you developed this program where the kids were running the library. And I mean, it's brilliant. So include that. It's, you know, turning over the control of the library to students is major. I still never have read anything like that. And so, but how does that happen? You have to trust kids. You have to lay the foundation. But it's a beautiful thing to see when it actually happens. And the kids see school very differently then. They have choice. They have purpose. They're treated as leaders, people who can actually make decisions. They're trusted.
Matt: That was one of our sayings was, "Kids learn to make decisions by making decisions." And they're going to make mistakes, right? And it was like $5,000 that they got. It wasn't a small amount, you know, and I think that that trust that we had in them was crucial.
Regie: Talk a little bit about that because what you did and what you and Micki did in that program is a model for getting kids to buy into... they didn't see the library as just for them. Their vision expanded, which is what we want. Kids to leave school not just thinking about how they can make a lot of money or what they can do for themselves, but how do we actually care for others and include everyone in the decision-making? And that was pretty amazing.
Matt: Yeah, I think it took a lot of humility to say we don't know what the kids want and then to give them the tools and the...
Regie: And you were telling me, I'm just going to interrupt. You said "what they want." You mean what books they want in the library?
Matt: Right, yeah, what books they wanted. But beyond even that, like what do they want the library to look like, you know, and we took on more of a role of a guide on the side versus a lot of direct instruction. So we had to take a step back, you know, physically and professionally for them to make those decisions. For me as an administrator, a lot of my work was removing obstacles and increasing the supports to make that happen, which there isn't a lot of fanfare, there isn't a lot of spotlight on that, but it's like, I don't want to call it the dirty work, but it was like the grunt work, you know, that finding the money and attending meetings and going to the board and explaining, you know, what we're doing and crunching the data.
Regie: But you didn't keep that hidden. You shared that with the kids.
Matt: Yep, we shared it with the kids. We said, "Here's what the kids are wanting in terms of books, but also here's how you're growing as readers too. Like if you're a part of this group, your achievement scores are going up." And so there was a very virtuous cycle of learning there too.
Regie: And you said, you said they became librarians.
Matt: Yeah. They very much were advocating for certain kinds of books, you know, from their perspective, but also they took... they were doing some perspective taking. Like I remember one girl said, "I really want books on ADHD because I want my friends to understand what it's like for me," you know, so that empathy, that self-compassion, agency, all that shined through. And it's hard to measure, right? But I think through some of those anecdotal quotes and observations, it was just a cool thing.
Regie: And it just comes back around to where I think where we started, which was, you know, "When did adults see you?" You know, when did you have that culture, that sense of belonging? And we both acknowledge it was when adults said something to us, but I think it's also what adults do. You created an opportunity. You created an opportunity that allowed them to belong and to shine. An opportunity that very few kids have. It's like, "No, no, you can't do this because you haven't been trained as a librarian." Right. And you took away that, you know, the usual thinking and made it possible for them to see themselves in a role that even other teachers hadn't seen.
Matt: Yeah. We reduced the positionality, I think someone called it, of "us" and "them." So that gap, that hierarchy kind of went away. That's great. Just that permission that they had to make decisions. Now, I don't remember ever saying anything to any kid, like "you can do this." So I think that's maybe a lesson to take away for listeners here is even if you don't say something like maybe what we heard as students, you know, you with Don Holdaway, me with my economics teacher, what we do can speak very powerfully to just the environments we create.
Regie: And also maybe a good place to end is it's all about celebration. I mean, the classrooms that are joyful, the reason that I loved the work was the joyful moments of seeing a kid do something that they didn't think they could do, that perhaps you or other students or the way the culture is set up where they felt that they belonged as part of the culture made things possible that the child and even we maybe didn't know that they could do.
So I think the celebration, that has always been a huge thing for me is to notice, to become a noticer, to notice what kids can do and then comment on it. I was thinking about that today before we met because it's a beautiful day in Seattle where I live. And I was just taking a short walk around my house and outside and I came across, oh, I would say half a dozen perfect spider webs and they were absolutely gorgeous the way the sun was hitting it. And I actually changed the way I was walking so that I wouldn't disrupt this web. But it was not just... It was magical because I allowed myself to see it. I wasn't rushing somewhere. I was very careful that I didn't destroy it, that I could just kind of be in the moment and say, "Wow." And I think that's one of our biggest jobs actually as teachers and parents is to help learners know... is to, and parents, is to help learners notice things. "What did you notice about what this author did? What did you notice on the way to school today?" Because I think we go about our lives so quickly, and especially today when we're all kind of, I don't know what the word is, I don't know, in a state over the world and what's going on and enough said about that.
So, you know, you have to sort of slow down and celebrate the beauty of the physical world, which is there, and appreciate all the strengths that students are bringing, and teachers as well. And it's difficult to do if you are, you know, constantly reading from a script and you're not giving the room and space and trust for kids to give us those moments that, you know, we're celebrating.
Regie: And if you're reading the script, the script has to be internalized. The framework has to be internalized. If you're reading the script, you're not noticing the kids. Your focus is on, "Well, am I getting the lesson in? Did we cover all the points?" And you're not noticing the kids. "What are they curious about? How can you take what's required by the standards and make it fit the difficulties that we're having with clean water and homelessness and put it together in a way that the kids are engaged and this is something they really want to learn about?"
Matt: Yeah, and your article speaks so well to that. And again, I think it's the perfect article to start at the beginning of the year with your staff as well as your book. Thank you for being an influencer, Regie, and continuing to do this good work and sharing your wisdom.
Regie: And let's have another conversation. It's great talking with you. And it's been nice that we've gotten to know each other first as colleagues. I think I met you at Wisconsin Reading. We might have had lunch together at a table with your teachers. And then we've become friends over the years, and that's been delightful.
And I don't know if people know that you are also now, which I think is fabulous, you work at a bookstore, an independent bookstore.
Matt: Yeah, yeah, yeah, one day a week. The dog and I, she brings in the customers, and I try to seal the deal, have them walk out with a book or two. But yeah, it's been fun, and it's just nice to see that side of reading too, and people coming in and just... You get to see all the latest books coming in.
Matt: Yeah, it's barely work, but someone's got to do it.
Regie: Well, thank you for the opportunity to talk with you. Always a pleasure.
Matt: Likewise, Regie. Thank you. Good to see you. Thank you.
