All right. Well, hello, and welcome back to the Smarter Literacy Podcast.
I know that last week I said it was our last chat, but we have a really special surprise for you. We're so excited to bring back somebody that many of you, if you've been with us at Smarter Intervention for a while will know very well, our very own Mikayla Storey-Link, who has such an exciting journey story news to share. And so anyway, I just wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you, Makayla, for taking time to join us today.
Yes, thank you for having me back.
Yeah, absolutely. And I know that, like we've mentioned with Lindsay, we have had some shifts and some changes, and Mikayla has had some shifts and some changes too, and so I'm excited to be able to dive into your story and your journey, and I think for so many listeners, especially your early journey, might be really helpful to really understand how you got into literacy space and teaching and intervention and what that looked like for you. So I'd love to just start there and hear a little bit about what got you into literacy in the beginning, and then we'll just take you through the journey of where you're at now.
Absolutely. So when I got into literacy originally, I was fresh out of school and had a background in psychology and special education that I wasn't totally sure which direction that was going to take me in, and found Ascend on a job posting, and thought that it sounded really interesting. I always knew I wanted to work with kids, but didn't really know what that was going to look like. And so I reached out and applied, not knowing what to expect, and was so grateful that Corey decided to take a chance on me. And that really kick started my education journey and literacy career.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the things that I would love to hear a little bit more about was what that looked like for you jumping into literacy coming right out of college. And, you know, I know a lot of times it looks different from what you learn in school to essentially what the beginning of that looked like for you when you started working with students.
So I had done a few internships in elementary schools doing both some speech and language, some occupational therapy, some general education.
But in my studies, I really only had, it wasn't even one class on dyslexia, it was one day in one class that we covered dyslexia and dysgraphia. And so I can't even really say I had much background besides just the couple of hours we had spent discussing it in class. But when I jumped in, I really fell in love with the students that we were working with and the type of instruction, and how we could, in this new way of teaching reading, in this very systematic and explicit way, completely transform what that looks like for them, coming from a, if you give them a book, they will learn to read, you just practice flashcards, and you sound it out, to a much more systematized and explicit scope and sequence where you can break down all of these spelling rules that I had no idea what they were, and looking at my background saying, man, this would have been really helpful for me to have learned growing up, because now as a full grown adult, I'm looking at how I spell words differently.
And so that was a really cool kind of first experience as we entered the field.
And what would you say were some of those challenges in the beginning? Because I know for so many of especially when we first jump into teaching or really any new career, right, trying to learn as you go, but I'm so curious, what were some of the biggest challenges that you faced in the beginning?
So I had a lot of experience working with kids at that point, but like I said, I didn't have a lot of experience in literacy itself. And so I remember very clearly sitting with a student who asked me what OO was going to sound like, and we hadn't quite gotten there yet, but I'm sitting there going, oh, oh, oh, the oh, ah, and just being like, let me get back to you on that. Because I had never had to break it down that way. It was just something that was in the words that I read and spelled.
And so I did my best to stay ahead of the lessons and really try to figure out, okay, we're working on CK today, and TCH, and DGE, and learning all these rules so that I could teach them to my students and to their families. But it was a bit of a challenge at first because I just didn't have the background to know what a syllable type was, what all of these patterns said, or really how to jump into some of those more complex skills like vocabulary and comprehension that felt like things we needed to teach but didn't have an explicit script on how to teach.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's such a great point that so many of us are learning as we go along with our students.
And I think just giving yourself the grace of telling students, you know what, I'm gonna get back to you on that.
I'll look into that for you. Or I don't know. I think it's so beautiful. And I also love that you said just staying one step ahead. I think sometimes we don't wanna jump into things unless we know everything there is to know. And I think sometimes that just doesn't work, right?
It was a great experience to learn them kind of with my students at first because they would ask questions that I didn't even think to ask as I was learning, but it also allowed me to jump in and really get going and deliver this instruction without spending years and years and years building up that kind of sound knowledge and vocabulary that is necessary.
I don't want to discount that, but was something that I could learn alongside them and introduce well as we were learning it together.
And I think so many educators, that's actually what we're doing, right? And when I think even about, yeah, myself and my own journey, I feel like it's the same where it's been all of my students have taught me so much or have asked, like you said, have asked a specific question and I'm like, I never would have even thought of that or sort of present in a certain way that you're like, oh, interesting. I wouldn't have connected it that way, but I love that you did. And so I think being able to learn alongside of your students. So I'm curious about some of your early students, if any of them kind of stood out to you or thinking back to kind of the beginning of your journey and then what that looks like, not just now that you've been doing this for nearly a decade, right? But what that's looked like with some of your students and just how they helped you grow.
When I got started, my first few students and really my first many students, were elementary or very early middle school aged. And then as we continued on, I would take on older and older students to now, most of my students are actually in that secondary setting.
But thinking about my early students, they were mostly, I would say, around eleven years old or so when I would start working with them.
And I remember too that I had at the very beginning, where they were both boys, they were both eleven, but had very, very different personalities, very different needs, as well as just academic backgrounds. And that was a really interesting experience to go from session with student A, who needed me to show up very differently than when I would then deliver him back to parents and have my second student come in, who needed a totally different approach.
And so that was a really interesting learning opportunity to see how we deliver the same phonics instruction and the same vocabulary and comprehension and all of these skills, but need to use different examples and need to present error correction and instruction in very different ways, depending on the behaviors that they had and the personalities that they would match with.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think sometimes that's where having such a structured approach can be so helpful because if you're not worried about, all right, what do I need to teach? Right? Because like you said, generally, they needed the same instruction. They just needed it to come from a different perspective or a different energy from you. And so I think that's one of the really beautiful things about structured literacy as a whole is if you know what your scope and sequence is and you know what your lesson flow is gonna be, it gives you a little bit more of that flexibility then to be able to, okay, we're gonna need to be able to talk about video games over here when I'm talking about specific patterns versus, you know, dinosaurs over here at that elementary level. But I love how you mentioned then that transition into secondary because I think it's the same skills generally.
However, all of a sudden it looks very different. So I'd love to hear about what that looked like as you transitioned into secondary, what that looks like now, because I know that you work with a lot of secondary students at this time.
Yeah. So now, and kind of in that transition, we went from teaching primarily in late elementary, early middle school students, to seeing them just get older and older, both through COVID, but also just in the last couple of years post COVID, it feels like COVID was a year or two ago, but now thinking it's been six years, that we've seen the impacts maintained in terms of students really needing more support, be it in literacy, executive functioning, and kind of all of these areas.
And so something that we spent quite a bit of time working on and thinking through was how we deliver this necessary instruction to students in similarly to the two different personalities, but in a different way. So the way we teach CK to a third grader might look different than how we teach it to a seventh grader or an eleventh grader.
And so we spent some time thinking through that in terms of what does the instruction and the approach look like? What does the scope and sequence need to look like? Are those skills the same?
And really what I've found, and you can speak to this as well, knowing that you have the entire secondary curriculum, was these students need the underlying skills. But as they get into high school, it became less important to teach every single phonics pattern in a very systematic order, because we just were running out of time.
And so instead, really trying to focus in on the skills that were going to make the biggest impact.
So thinking about the sound a, what are the most common patterns going to be? Do we really need to get into some of these obscure patterns upfront, or can we leave them off at first?
And what does that look like for students that need more of the vocabulary and comprehension side?
With my younger students, we build all of that into the lesson because they're still developing all those skills and thinking through how they all match together. But by the time we're hitting that secondary age, we often need to prioritize what's going to make the biggest impact here. So thinking even further about is this student going to respond with word recognition support, language comprehension support, or that mix of both, and then taking an extra step to say, what order are we teaching these skills in? Because it's going to look very different for student A versus student B.
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's such a great point where in elementary, like you said, we are going to pull it all together and we're going to build that very systematically. We often still have more time with them to really be able to dig in and go through pattern by pattern. And even at the elementary level, certain students don't need certain patterns, it's still helpful for them to receive that instruction because it's giving them that opportunity to essentially practice those routines or those skills over and over and over again, right? We're giving them repetition, even with patterns that maybe they don't necessarily, they already kind of knew maybe, oh, oh, or maybe not. That is one that often.
Maybe they knew it, but I didn't.
Right. But that being said, being able to go through each of those phonics patterns and still incorporating in the vocabulary and the fluency and the comprehension and the reciprocal writing process is so helpful. But by the time we get to secondary, you're starting to feel like, wow, there's a lot of patterns and we honestly don't have time to get through every single one of them. And it really does start to become more of what you said of figuring out what is gonna deliver the biggest return on our investment of time with this student, especially based off of, okay, are they middle school?
Do we potentially still have a little bit of time or are we looking at, I had a number of students I worked with over the summer that were going into their junior or senior year of high school. So it's like, what do we need to do to be able to make sure that we have the skills that we need? And you're right, a lot of times that can be more of the comprehension thinking about what is the strategy that I want you to take when you're listening to your teacher talk and using that systematic structured literacy for more of that, then what does AI say? Right?
Like there can still be that value for sure, especially for some very targeted patterns or depending on how impacted your students are. Right? If they're not reading at all, like if they're not able to decode, we absolutely need to make sure that we're giving them skills. But you have some students who compensate pretty well and it's like, hey, maybe I want you to recognize that some of these exist so that you can recognize, oh, there's patterns in words.
Let me try and find them. But Absolutely.
You're like picking and choosing, right?
Absolutely. I need you to do this. And I know you have a wide variety too of students, even at that secondary level of students who really do need that decoding support versus those maybe who are at more of that language comprehension. Can you share any more about that? You know, what that looks like to make that determination for you? Like, what does that look like to choose? Like who needs what?
A lot of it came down to both the testing and background to know where the students are kind of at in terms of compared to grade level, what their profiles look like from a diagnostic perspective, but also thinking about what their goals are and what their parents' goals are.
So for example, I have one student who her mom's goal based on her profile and learning abilities was, I just want her to see literacy as a life skill. I want her to not completely shut down. I just want her to see this as something long term that she'll need to use and be able to read and to text her friends and just use it functionally.
And so her daughter, who I work with as well, also said, she's like, I just want to text my friends.
And so we use that as a goal and a motivator. And for her, a lot of that is the decoding and pairing in some of that language comprehension to make sure she can functionally read a text, even if it's not quite a high school level text, and take meaning from it, understand how to ask thoughtful questions as a part of that comprehension process, and working on the writing side as well.
Whereas another student I have is working much more in-depth in the language comprehension, thinking about analyzing texts and writing thoughtful responses, getting ready to go to college, and how that's going to look, where her decoding is actually looking pretty strong. There were a few patterns that we touch on just to make sure that any holes or gaps that she has, we can fill in. But most of our time is spent in much more in-depth comprehension work.
And then I have another student who needs a lot of both. Her decoding needs a lot of support. We've been working on the patterns for a while, and it needs a lot of repetition. And her vocabulary is also something that we're really working to support how we can use our vocabulary framework and approach words that we don't know in text, how we can figure them out, and how we can retain that knowledge as well.
I love how you mentioned their goals, because I think that can just be very telling in terms of where do we need to focus and how deep do we really need to be able to go in this. Because I even think of this summer, had a student who had dyslexia, but the primary concern really was more of that I want to be able to understand when my teacher is lecturing, what notes to be able to take. And I want to be able to read a text and be able to take meaning from that without having to read it again and again and again. And while we certainly could have spent time working on some of those phonics patterns because there definitely was a gap there, It didn't necessarily align with what the goal was.
And she was reading functionally enough that that wasn't getting in the way. That wasn't the reason that she wasn't able to comprehend. The reason she wasn't able to comprehend was because she was having a hard time being able to synthesize the information, pull out the important key details, like you said, the vocabulary pieces were bigger. And so in terms of, we only have this short period of time to work together.
So if I only have for, you know, a few weeks, we need to make sure that we're giving you the best return on your time. And so sometimes, yeah, that really comes down to the goals. And if her goal was, I wanna get better at spelling and I want to be able to recognize what these words say when I I get to them and I can't sound them out, well, then that instruction might've looked different. But at this point, you also start to think about for high schoolers or even middle schoolers, spell check exists, like some of these tools So what is the return on?
Yes, we could get you to be an excellent speller. Maybe, probably not, but maybe, but is it worth it? Right.
Yeah. I tell my students often that we need to be able to, especially when we think of spelling, we need to spell to a functional enough level that if we had to write something by hand, someone else would be able to figure it out. And if we are typing, whether it's a phone or a computer, we need to get it close enough that Spellcheck can figure it out. Or we can look it up and try to use other strategies. But if we're thinking realistically, I'm using Spellcheck for certain things too, whether it's just a typo because my fingers are moving too fast, or like, oh, is this word an e I or an I e? I think it's this. And Spellcheck is helping me out too, even having all of this background of knowing the patterns for the last ten years and teaching them to students.
We still rely on it too.
So true.
Oh my goodness. So helpful. Feel like, yeah, just thinking about thinking about that and thinking about what students need. But, you know, again, I think having that structured general approach of, okay, this is generally what this looks like.
Because I think sometimes what that can start to feel like when you're like, oh, every student kinda needs something different. I know we've talked about this in the past. It's like, oh, great. I have to create, you know, an individual lesson plan or I have to create for every single group.
I have to do something totally different.
Oh, I have to figure out how to teach main idea to this group. And then I have to figure out how to teach phonics instruction to that group. So knowing that you have a number of students who have different needs and it does look different, Do you find yourself creating individual lesson plans or do you generally feel like, no, like, I know I know what this is gonna look like?
No. I haven't needed to create anything individual outside of just adapting activities that are already built into the lesson plans. I'm still using Delivering Smarter Intervention, even though we've had a bit of a transition professionally. And so I'm still using those lessons for my students, and I can pull whether it's the word recognition vowel o lesson or a language comprehension lesson. And I can run through those activities in the same order and using those same materials, but I might adapt some of the activities to be more of a game focus for my students who need a little bit more attention support. Or when I'm talking to my students about one of the comprehension lessons, we might have different levels of background knowledge that we need to talk through.
And so activities within the lessons would definitely be individualized, but I wouldn't create a whole new lesson just because the materials we have hit on those research based principles, they hit on the explicit teaching that we need. It's more of that personality adaptation that we're looking for at this point, I think.
And so, yes, Cher, you like hinted at it a little bit, but Cher, so where are you at now? What are you doing? What does look like for you? What does a typical day look like for you right now? Share share the exciting news.
Yeah. So for those of you who don't know, I was working with Ascend from twenty seventeen when I entered the literacy field. And then earlier this year, I actually opened my own practice called Cova Learning Center. And that transition came after I had my son. He's about ten months old now.
And so that has allowed me to get to stay at home with him during the day, which was the best fit for our family.
And then I'm working with students in the evenings after my husband gets home from work. I'm working part time right now in my practice, but getting to see students each night, which has really been the best of both worlds for me, loving this field and loving my job, loving my students and getting to balance loving being a mom to my son as well.
So we're so excited for you. It's so exciting. It's just such an exciting transition.
And yes, your son is just the absolute cutest little ray of light Oh my goodness. But, you know, I think so given all of that, when you are in private practice or seeing students, you do have some flexibility to make some of those decisions. But that being said, I would say, and maybe I'm speaking for you. So definitely correct me if I'm wrong, but even though technically you could create individual lessons for all of your students, there's time, right?
That you have with your son. And so whether you're in a school setting or whether you're in a private setting, there's always constraints, right? About what is the amount of time that I can really put in and do I need to do that to be able to get results for my students? So being able to balance some of that, I think is still so helpful.
I think when a little bit of a background story here. When I started back with Ascend, I remember saying, I'm going to make every bit individualized for all my students to the point where I was hand drawing sound decks for them with pictures that I thought they would like, and taking hours and hours to draw these things. And I gave them to my students, and then it just didn't bring them back. It didn't make any meaningful difference for them.
And so that very quickly was something where I was like, okay, this isn't going to move the needle forward. And so I think just trying to think through, we can invest so much time into things that may or may not actually move the needle forward for our students.
And so for me, I find that using these already scripted out very systematic, explicit lessons that we have in the Delivering Smarter Intervention program allows me to hit on all of the components that are moving the needle forward from that research based effective instruction background.
And then my time can be better spent with my students building that rapport and taking five minutes at the beginning to ask them about their week, or checking in with parents to see how things are going at school and how they're going at home, and having more of those conversations so that the time I am spending outside of just the hour I'm seeing each of the students for can move the needle forward in a more meaningful way than let me build something completely brand new that may or may not hit as well as this already done, easy to cut and paste framework for the lesson that we have.
I was definitely there too. I think we've all been there. And I think I sometimes try to go back there of like, okay, let me actually just recreate this whole thing for, and then you're like, okay, that didn't, that didn't make any meaningful difference. I really should just stick with the structure. And honestly, I think sometimes having that structure can be so helpful, not only for us as interventionists or educators to know this is what I'm gonna be teaching, this is what comes first, this is what comes next, but for our students too, to just know this is the expectation, this is what we're going to do.
And so then, you know, when they start to jump into conversation about something or whatever, it's easier to be able to bring them back to like, okay, great. Why don't you go ahead and tell me about that after this next activity to kinda know, alright, I generally know what this is going to look like. So I think he can be helpful in multiple ways.
Yes. I have some students that really needed and benefit still from that very routine oriented lesson structure where every time they come in and we're doing a word recognition lesson, they know we're gonna start with a PA drill, we'll go through the sound drill, we'll work on review activities, we'll do our new instruction, and so on, versus a language comp lesson where we're working on vocabulary and comprehension and writing. And having the same type of activity in the same order every time has been really, really helpful for my students who have more executive functioning needs to be able to know, I need to check these things off my list. I've gone through these activities. I know what to expect, and has reduced some behaviors from some students as well, because it's predictable, it's expected, and they know where we're going.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I definitely have students that they need that to know. And then I also have some of my high school students where the benefit in that is that then I can say, great.
Here is your template. So when you go to approach a new text, here's what I want you to do. I want you to be able to note down your background knowledge before you get into it. I want you for each section of your reading to have done your sticky notes strategy, right?
I want you after you're done to organize those sticky notes so that you can put together a clear retell, right? And just follow the post reading process. And so even having that structure for both reading and writing then allows them to go generalize it outside of needing me. I'm like, great.
Now you don't need me, now go do this with your own text that you have in your classroom. And so having that structure can help. Yeah, for so many reasons, honestly. Absolutely.
So, so many thoughts, so many ideas. Thank you so much for sharing what that looks like. And so I'm so curious about what's next for you. So you've had this journey from twenty seventeen, starting in literacy, working in literacy for nearly a decade. Now you have your own practice, which I have to say, at first, I was like, oh, COVID, that's so cute. And then I realized, like, in the middle of the night, I was like, is that Colorado, Virginia? Is that the combination of those two states?
So it worked out really well because I had spent so long, many more weeks than I needed to, thinking, what am I going to name this practice? I had everything ready besides actually being able to file the paperwork because I was so stuck on a name.
And I noticed a sign around where I live that said Cova and then the business name, because here it's coastal Virginia where I live now. But I liked it because so much of my journey was in Colorado as an educator, that it does pair Colorado and Virginia together.
And so I liked that it was something from my background in this journey as somebody who lived in Colorado for such a long time and then moved to Virginia. And then I also thought for my students that don't live here, it was catchy enough that they could remember it.
So yes, and some other just it's a note to where I live now, as well as a catchy name, but does hold that two state acronym as well.
I was like, oh, maybe that's what it is.
I'll have to ask. So anyway, thank you. Now I know. But but what's what's next? What do you what are you planning? What are you thinking? What what do you see?
Yeah. So I started the practice back in June, and just recently, it's now August when we're recording this, have my website up. So definitely looking to help enhance that with blogs and potentially resources to help families that are navigating this learning journey, as well as taking on some more students. I have some openings in my schedule that I'd love to fill just so I can increase the impact that I'm making working with students each week.
That's so exciting. I'm so excited for you. So before we wrap up, and I definitely want you to share where people can find more about you, but as our kind of last thing, I would love to know what is one piece of literacy advice or advice for somebody who is working in the literacy space right now that you would share?
I think the biggest piece of advice that has benefited me has been to just go for it and get started, whether that is jumping in and teaching a lesson and being okay with it not being perfect. Like, you might have a student ask you a question where you're sitting there and you don't know the answer. I've had plenty of those. I still have those sometimes.
And if it's an instruction, if it is taking a leap and starting a business and making a practice, that could be a great way to jump in and go for it, whether you do that full time or just at nights like I do or after school. But I think letting go of the fear of everything has to be exactly how I want it and exactly perfect and embracing some of that unknown. Because I think there's a lot of beauty in those moments for growth, both as ourselves professionally, but also for students to see us showing up and delivering this instruction without the fear of having to be perfect, because I know they face that too in their own lives, and I wanna be able to be a role model in that instance as well.
That's such a great point. That's so beautiful. I think a lot of times we do pause ourselves or not push forward because we're worried that it's not gonna be just right and so yeah, just being willing to step into something even if it's not going to be perfect at the beginning, it never is and even if you felt like it was, there were lessons that I gave very early on in my career that I was like, that was amazing, that was the best thing ever and looking back on it, I'm like, well, you live and you learn, right? But yeah, and I think that that's great too, to recognize that students also need to see somebody that is willing to make mistakes and not know things and research and all of the things. So I do think that that is so beautiful.
Well, again, thank you for taking this time. So I would love to take a moment to have you share where listeners can learn more about you, or if they have students that they're thinking, wow, maybe somebody could use a little bit of extra support where they can find you.
So the best place to find me is on my website, w w w dot covalearningcenter dot com. And you can also find me on Facebook and Instagram covalearningcenter as well.
Well, thank you again for taking the time to be here. Hopefully, as our listeners are listening to this, you've got some light bulb moments, whether you are working with students in elementary and kind of thinking about what that looks like or that secondary shift, what is it that they need? Or if you're looking potentially to start something knowing that, we're doing this, we're in this space with you and we will see you next time. Thank you.
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Smarter Literacy Podcast. Make sure to subscribe for more strategies and insights to make delivering effective literacy instruction easy, or at least easier. And if you found this episode helpful, share it with a friend or leave a rating and review wherever you get your podcasts. It really does help others find the show, and we are beyond grateful for your support. Thanks for listening. Until next time. Happy teaching.
