Episode 48 - Structured, Integrated, Inclusive: Reading Instruction for English Learners with Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan, EdD

Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan, Ed.D, is a Bilingual Speech Language Pathologist and a Certified Academic Language Therapist. She is the Director of Valley Speech Language and Learning Center in Brownsville, Texas which was established in 1993.  She also works with Texas Institute for Measurement Evaluation and Statistics at the University of Houston.   

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan is the author of Esperanza (HOPE), a Spanish language program designed to assist students who struggle with learning to read. Her research interests include the development of early reading assessments for Spanish-speaking students and the development of reading interventions for bilingual students. She was the co-principal investigator of a longitudinal study funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the Institute for Education Science that examined the oracy and literacy development in English and Spanish of Spanish-speaking children.  

She serves as the Vice President for the International Dyslexia Association and has authored curricular programs, book chapters, and journal articles related to oracy and literacy development for English language learners. 

Dr. Danielle Scorrano: [00:00:00] Hello READers in the READ Podcast universe. Welcome to the READ Podcast, the Research Education ADvocacy podcast, where we connect you with researchers, educators, and thought leaders on topics in education and child development.

READ is produced by the Windward Institute. I'm your host, and I am joined by a researcher whose work I truly admire for quite some time, and who's a leader in the field of reading education. Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan. Dr. Hagan, welcome to the Read podcast. 

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: Thank you. I'm excited to be here today. 

Dr. Danielle Scorrano: Oh, yay. Me too. I'm so excited to have you on. I know you said you were excited, but I just want to know first, how are you showing up to this conversation? What are your hopes or key ideas that you want to highlight in our time together? 

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: I think it's essential that every teacher out there in classrooms, any every interventionist really be prepared to understand students who are learning English as an additional language with the hopes of [00:01:00] gaining multiliteracy that this is all possible, but we have to be strategic and comprehensive in our approach. And I hope today we'll cover some of that in our discussion. 

Dr. Danielle Scorrano: Excellent. I love that. Strategic and comprehensive - I'm going to hold onto those two words. So I do want to read your formal bio to introduce our READ listeners to you. So Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan is a bilingual speech language pathologist and a certified academic language therapist.

She holds a doctorate degree in curriculum and instruction and is the president of Valley Speech Language and Learning Center in Brownsville, Texas, and is an associate research professor for the Texas Institute for Measurement Evaluation and Statistics at the University of Houston. I love statistics, so this is exciting.

Elsa's research interests include the development of early reading assessments for Spanish speaking students, in addition to the development of reading interventions for bilingual students, she was the co-principal investigator of a longitudinal study funded by the [00:02:00] National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the Institution for Education Science, examining the oracy and literacy development in English and Spanish of Spanish-speaking children, which we will link in the episode bookmarks on the READ podcast website.

Elsa currently serves as the vice chairperson of the International Dyslexia Association, chairperson of the National Joint Committee and Learning Disabilities, and was a past board member of the National Academic Language Therapy Association. She has authored curricular programs, book chapters, and journal articles related to ossi and literacy development for English language learners.

Truth be told, we are about to learn a lot from you, so I'm so excited. So as we start, Elsa, in your own words, I'd like to know more about your story and your professional journey. 

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: Okay. So, you know, that's really, I usually do not talk about myself, but I am, my parents, my father, is from Mexico.

My mother's family came from Spain. And [00:03:00] so our family, grew up speaking Spanish. However, when I entered school, we did not have the opportunity of bilingual education, and so our parents were encouraged to only speak English to us. And in the school, we were also punished for speaking our home language in the playground, in the classroom.

And it was, you know, just pretty terrifying. And luckily, by the time I reached middle school, they offered foreign language. And then I got to show all that I knew in another language and really thrived and continued that journey all through, junior high school, high school into college, went to study further linguistics in Spain, went to Mexico to study some more.

And it was all for personal benefit, just to really, you know, thrive in my language, my culture, the linguistics of the language. And now [00:04:00] today I get to use all that information in my work. And what we hope today is that all students are honored as you know, that they have such assets that they bring to our classrooms and that we have to honor the language and the culture and honor that, wow, we have such a great resource in speaking more than one language. And let's really capitalize on those resources. 

Dr. Danielle Scorrano: Hmm. I love that. Thank you for taking us on the journey there. And I like how you talked about honoring the home language and capitalizing on these resources, and I think I wanted to start with the reading brain. But I want to actually, now I'm talking out loud as I'm thinking about this.

I actually want to start on what you talked about honoring the resources and capitalizing on the resources, because I think it brings up a good point. And in past conversations on the READ podcast and now in this current one, we constantly seek to broaden the research and educational [00:05:00] implications for supporting all readers and all learners.

And so I wanted to start by setting up the statistics of English language learners in United States. And for our READ listeners, I understand there are listeners in 120 plus countries listening around the world. But we are recording from the United States and focusing on children who are speaking a different native language who are acquiring English and learning to read English.

And in the United States, according to the NCTQ, the National Council of Teacher Quality, there's over 5 million English language learners in public student schools around the United States. That is actually a 35% increase over the last two decades, and, Dr. Hagan, I think, I'm not sure if this is still true, but they say 80% are Spanish speakers and the second is Arabic. Does that still hold true? 

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: Yes, and what we also know is that how they're serviced in schools. So as you mentioned, you're talking about what is the [00:06:00] primary kind of system that we have here in the United States. And, you know, these students are representing about 10% of that school population.

But you know the other languages, you're right, it's Arabic, Vietnamese, Chinese and, no matter the language, each of these languages, right, has its own structure. And each of these individuals that represent these languages also have their own culture. And it's up to us as educators to really understand and know about our students.

We don't have to know their language, but we must know something about its structure. And we must be good at trying to uncover and discover what kind of connections can we make so that these students can strive and that they can feel very much a part of the school community. We need to do better on our school to home connections really engaging our families.

[00:07:00] But as we look look across the United States, we're concerned that our students are not reading proficiently. And you know, there's this thing called the nation's report card that describes fourth graders and eighth graders and how many are proficient and so for non-English learners, about 37% are proficient or above, but if you're an English learner, it's 10%.

And by the way, we blame things on the pandemic. For the English learner, that was the case in 2019, before the 2020 pandemic hit this country. And it stayed the same. We didn't lose ground. When we looked in 2022, where in the non-English learners, we lost about two percentage points.

And some people will say, well, that's just not a fair test. It's not a fair look. Well we have to [00:08:00] understand something and why should we understand? And what, this is what I often talk about to folks who say, I don't want to screen, we don't want to over identify these students. Absolutely we don't.

But we have to know why do we screen? Why do we measure anything? It's because I need to know that so I can design my instruction so I can be diagnostic and prescriptive in my teaching. I'm not going to diagnose a young child in kindergarten or first grade with any kind of reading disability, but I'm going to look and see how are they faring along their peers, or compared to their peers.

And how does that inform our school and what we need to be doing more of and more intentionally and purposefully. And so I know lots of people out there are worried about this over-identification, which it has happened in our history. Don't get me wrong. It has happened, but I think more in these last, you know, 15 years, it hasn't been so [00:09:00] much about the over-identification, it's been about the under identification and not enough service to these students in a comprehensive manner.

Dr. Danielle Scorrano: Hmm. Yeah, those are all really good points. And I do want to touch on screening and I want to talk and touch on the comprehensive instruction and you mentioned students across a lot of different languages and we'll talk about the research, the solid research well-documented over decades on the importance of explicit systematic instruction for students learning English.

Right. And you talk about structured biliteracy, so I do want to get to those two points, even with diverse languages and cultures, that's the instruction that is working for students who are learning to read English. I wanted to pull back to the reading brain. You talked about English, you talked about Arabic, you talked about Vietnamese.

What I was interested to actually learn about in my own research from an educator is that each of these languages, some of them have certain similar [00:10:00]features and some of them don't. So perhaps from an educator perspective, what is different or similar about certain features of languages and why would that be important for the classroom?

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: Yeah. So as we look, first of all, the foundation of reading is language. And if we look at language, no matter where you live in the world, children are exposed, and humans are meant to speak. Children are exposed to language, and there's certain kind of developmental milestones, would you say that are pretty universal. As young children begin to talk, they begin to say their first year words by one year and put two words together.

And we have to be mindful of that because as your language develops, these are the precursors to reading because reading is language based. And we talked about language being a natural process, humans [00:11:00] being able to communicate orally.

And then we talk about reading as not being such a natural process. But reading is language based. And so that's why it's so important to have strong language skills to support those strong literacy skills. And as we develop those strong literacy skills, what I want to say about that, then that supports really that development of academic, further academic language.

So your literacy can support your language and your language can support your literacy skills. And so as we look at that and we think about the brain, there are certain centers in the brain, primarily in that left hemisphere that are responsible for us to, you know, take in the language, for us to understand what we're listening to, and for us to express ourselves. And when we look at reading, we see some of those same [00:12:00] centers activated, especially when we look at alphabetic languages.

Now, languages that are more pictographic, right, we see that, oh, you know, these pictographic languages, oh, there's some activation, not only in the left, but we see some activation in the right because a lot of those are depending on a lot of visual translating that picture to meaningful units of language.

And so no matter what, even in those languages that are pictographic, it's still necessary for individuals to be able to process the sounds. We call that ability, the phonological processing. If we're thinking about how it applies to reading, that applies to your phonological awareness. We have to transcribe that print that's on the page, whatever, whether that be an alphabet or more logographic.[00:13:00]

Right. And we have to apply meaning to it. And what happens, for example, for students that might have a reading disability, such as dyslexia, they may have difficulty in that phonological component of the language, which then affects their ability to read that print and be able to write and spell.

Dr. Danielle Scorrano: Hmm. Thank you for breaking that down for us. And I think that's really important for teachers of across any classroom working with students across any language to understand those mechanisms. And as we then think about instruction, what I loved first is when I asked you where you were showing up today, I felt this sense of excitement and empowerment, right, and working with all the students, and specifically students that are multilingual. And so we are gonna talk about this comprehensive approach, but I want to start with the [00:14:00] strengths, right? When I hear empowerment, I think of a strength-based approach. So what strengths do students who are multilingual or speak another language other than English, have prior to formal reading education in English language? 

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: So what we have to understand is they bring the strengths from their home environment, what they've been exposed to. They bring the strengths now of when they come into your classroom, they already have a set of language skills, right?

And so they have a sound system, they have a meaning system, right? They have a communication style, or often what we call that pragmatic language capabilities. And they have this way of, you know, putting and expressing their language. So they already have a structure.

And so when we think about language, every language in the world has a structure, and that structure involves the [00:15:00] sound system, right, the words and the meaning system. For some and in many cases, there's smaller units of meaning in a language that also can be very beneficial for reading. But they also have the way they use their language, like words and how words can go together to make cohesive sentences, how we express ourselves, how we take turns, how we initiate a conversation. We have to be aware that different languages and cultures have certain rules that are sometimes the unspoken rules. And then we put ourselves in this new system where, by the way, the majority in this country, the United States of America, the majority of these students who have a home language other than English, are primarily serviced in English medium classrooms.

I would love for us to have dual language classrooms across the United States. We just don't right now have that. We don't have the human capital to deliver [00:16:00]that. So what can we do in our instruction to meet the needs of these students is to realize that they do have a language. It has a structure, it has a way it operates and works, and how can we capitalize upon that as we put an additional language system and literacy system on top of what they bring to our classroom?

Dr. Danielle Scorrano: Hmm. Yeah, I read some research. I think it was Branum-Martin et al., 2012, that students who have a strong phonological awareness skills in their native language are likely to have strong phonological awareness skills in their second language. And I think that's important, right? That's right. Knowing that there are those structures, those systems and rules they already bring.

And again, what I hear you talk about is this integrated approach of marrying or bringing, I often sometimes will say different things on the podcast. I'm like, I don't like the way I describe that word. So, let me try that again. So when you talk about this integrated approach, you're [00:17:00] bridging the oral strengths and capacities, the written linguistic and then the cultural elements. 

I want to talk about this multi-prong approach, but starting with the bridging of the oral, written elements. And you obviously integrate the findings of the national reading panel in your research and incorporate the systematic explicit instruction. But I've heard you go further in the structured biliteracy. So can you help us to flesh out a breakdown what you mean by structured biliteracy to help children access the written language in English?

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: Right. So you mentioned, Lee Branum-Martin, actually, he was at the University of Houston so that was in kind of some of the same sets or was in the same sets of students that we were working for interventions.

So those same students that are in those studies to describe how phonological awareness operates across languages, it's those, often those same set of students where [00:18:00] we actually did interventions with those students. And so I can talk to you about what those interventions were when we found them at risk.

But what's very important to realize is that as I said, we have an oral language. And so Spanish is the most common language spoken in the homes of these students who are classified nationally as English learners. And when we look at that and we look at the Spanish language, it's a very, what we call transparent language, meaning that, it's very regular. It has five vowels. They never change. We've got these consonants, they're pretty reliable. Whereas in English, all the vowels have more than one sound. And, we have lots of different patterns and we borrowed from so many different languages. 

But in there, so Spanish has about some will say 22 phonemes. Some will say up to 24 phonemes. English has 44 phonemes. Some will say up to 46. No matter how you look at it, [00:19:00] English has more phonemes than most languages. And so, but what we have to do is understand that, you know, since so much transfers and then that study you're mentioning, it was like 0.92 between Spanish and English on this, you know, sound system. So I'm about 0.08 off from it being a perfect correlation. But what does that 0.08 possibly relate to? Well, we've got all these new sounds in English language, "oh, ah." And we have to first understand that there's connections to be made orally through the phonological component of the language.

We have to make those connections when we think about, the words and their meanings, the vocabulary, you know, English, you know, is 60% based upon Latin, another 15% of the Greek. And so between the Latin and we we have about 75% of our language. And so there's so much from a [00:20:00] language such as Spanish that is Latin based, that we can contribute to English and really help the students soar in vocabulary and their ability to express themselves.

And then that we can put into the written language. But we have to understand that, as I said, there's already a structure. And I, you know, for example, we have typical writing patterns and speaking patterns that are not atypical. It's just us overgeneralizing from our home language to the second language, which is a part of second language and second language literacy development.

So we capitalized upon that. We celebrate it. We let the students know, good for you. You said this and that is beautiful. I understood you, and there's a little bit of a difference in this English language. It works like this, right? So it's honoring when the student speaks to us, when the student reads to us when the students write that we are looking at those patterns that we're celebrating that [00:21:00]overgeneralization, because that's a part of that second language and second language literacy development.

And first we have to know the why behind the what that we see in front of us. And when we look across our country, you know, less than 3% of teachers are really qualified to work, you know, across these languages with this true specialization in how to meet the needs of these students learning English as an additional language.

Dr. Danielle Scorrano: Mm-hmm. Yeah. The 3% is, that is something I want to touch on, especially with the recent NCTQ report. I want to circle back to what you said about vocabulary because in learning about teaching English learners, I had read that even if a student is reading English with like fluency right, that we should not necessarily assume that they're comprehending.

Right. And as comprehension being the goal of reading, you talked about vocabulary, should there be a greater emphasis on building that vocabulary and comprehension, and what are those elements in structured biliteracy [00:22:00] or in other ways to foster that? 

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: Right. So what we see is teachers spend about 30% of their day on oral language, but it's not well designed, intentional, authentic, purposeful. In the United States, we have these practice guides from the Institute for Education Sciences practice guides. And we have one in particular that's really looking at the academic language and content knowledge of these students in the upper elementary grades into the middle school grades.

And what we find is yes, you know, let's get a set of these words, these academic words, and let's create these multiple opportunities for use across the content areas, right? And for these students, some of the best word learning strategies are to really capitalize on what we call our cognates. And these are words that are similar across languages that look the same and similar in [00:23:00] spelling, similar in meaning.

And I often give the example of the word canoe or, uh, and finding that, wow, look, I can see this very same word in English and in Spanish and Lan. I can see it in German, I can see it in French, right? I even saw it in Vietnamese and I could figure out that that was canoe. So can we capitalize upon that?

And capitalize upon, for example, in the Spanish language, we use words that are very high level academic words in English. And I'll give you an example. When my son was in high school, he came home and he goes, Hey mom, what does the word placate exactly mean? And I turned to him and I told him in Spanish, it's a word that we use every day.

Like, Hey, calm down, right? And we use the word placate in English, you use the word calm. So we use very high level, fancy words, but it's not just [00:24:00] knowing that we use that. It's making the connections in an intentional manner and teaching our students that this is a strategy for them. Think about, you know, does this exist in my home language?

And what connection can I make? That's up to us as educators to capitalize. But these are some very good word learning strategies. And also looking at what I called earlier, those morphemes and morphological awareness. And I call when you work across those languages, meta-morphological awareness.

Because you're not only thinking in one language, we're always thinking across languages, right? And so just capitalizing on that kind of meta-linguistic skill and teaching our students how we do that work so then they can generalize it. And they can be independent one day in just trying to figure out what does this exactly say?

And I've got to have, yes, the ultimate goal is reading comprehension. But for reading comprehension, you're right, I have to be able to read the print on the page accurately. I've got to be able to understand the words that are there. I [00:25:00] have to have some kind of background knowledge and experience, right, so that I, you know, can make some kind of connection to the content of what I'm reading about.

And I have to be active and strategic, always kind of monitoring my comprehension. But we want to teach the students how they can really foster, and we need to help them to foster these skills and we need to help them understand, you know, what a resource they have and that they can use that to that development of high levels of comprehension in the second language.

Dr. Danielle Scorrano: Hmm. I love all those pieces that you said. So what I hear you saying was providing insights of the cross-examination of cross-linguistic features, capitalizing on native language and context, developing the content goals and things like that. And what I liked what you talked about with your son was, That was an a micro opportunity of building some schema, right, and some background knowledge. 

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: Yes. And so, yes, and I have one more story to tell you. That was in high [00:26:00] school, and I was told when I was a very young person, and the person that told me I was wrong is still is my best friend today, one of my best friends, a very famous researcher that just is such a mentor.

But when I started talking about doing this with young children, I was told, well, that was not developmentally appropriate. Young children can't do this. And I give the example now my son has a four year old and we were at a restaurant. He goes, hey, look, I have a visor.

And I go, yes. Do you know why it's called Visor? It has V-I-S, vis, in it and O-R for you to see. He's like, oh no, I didn't know that. And I go, remember you went to the hospital, visit your great-grandfather. You were the visitor. You went to see him and look at me. What do I wear? Glasses to help what my vision.

And then the little four year old says, oh, Harry Potter, he wears a cloak. It's an invisible, when he wears the cloak, he is invisible. You cannot [00:27:00] see him. That was a four year old putting together, you know, the morphology, having that opportunity in a naturalistic way, and we can do this across the content areas.

There's so much opportunity in science classrooms and math when we're teaching science and math and social studies and language arts throughout that. So we have to make connection and it really works best when there's a central idea and then we can build these words from those central ideas. And doing this kind of work is a lot of fun and young students can do this work as well as older students.

Dr. Danielle Scorrano: Oh, I love that. That's such a great story. The Harry Potter, invisible cloak! 

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: Harry potter. And you know what, this preschool, oh, so he's a preschool. And the principal would say, oh, I go into the classroom to look at these beautiful words that, you know, little Andrew can say. And I tell the director of the school, all children can do this work.

He is [00:28:00] just as smart as anybody else. And all the other childrens are just as smart. It's opportunity. It's that intentional opportunity. That makes the difference. 

Dr. Danielle Scorrano: Again, harnessing the strengths and seeing those connections. I love that. And again, what we're returning back to, is building the schema and the background knowledge and making sure that we're, we are enabling as educators, students to make the connections from their home native language or the language they learned to speak first with then bridging it with learning the written language and reading.

What about the reading, writing connection? So, at the word and sentence level, or even at the spelling level, what elements of the reading, writing connection are important as students develop skills for their second language? 

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: Right. So what we see in looking and, you know, I'm looking with another researcher. We're just, I love looking at all these writing samples, but it's really so fascinating to observe from how [00:29:00] students first, you know, from what they are able to communicate orally and how they put that into print, right, from speaking to writing. And what's so amazing is that you do see these patterns in their language and it's almost like we want to say there's a stage, an extra stage of this overgeneralization before they get to that really formal spelling and writing pattern.

And so we've developed like some rubrics on how to look at that and really understand, you know, what is that progression of the student. But what's fascinating about that is you can see their spoken language in that print and you can see the syntax as well. You can see how, wow, I understand exactly what this sentence says.

The syntax differs a bit in this English language. Oh, we have to move this word, you know, in front of this word. And I'll give an example. So, you know, in the Spanish [00:30:00] language adjectives, right, follow the noun. And in the English language, the adjective is typically before the noun. And so you'll see kind of those different patterns of that.

But our students in the classrooms really need to get those foundational skills of written language, and that really does involve being able to, first of all, mechanically write on the page. We know that handwriting, for example, I know when I'm writing and creating something, I do it by hand over the computer.

We, there's some studies that will show the benefit of that. But I also have to look at that spelling and that grammatical component, but also understanding how the different text structures work and how we can scaffold that instruction step by step by step to create these wonderful compositions.

Steve Graham talks a lot [00:31:00] about how, you know, what we need in our classrooms and what we need in our interventions and how little time is truly dedicated to that. Recently in one of our studies, we were looking at the school day and how it was designed, and it was not integrated. It was like, okay, we're going to do this part of reading, let's say phonological awareness here.

We're going to do phonics here, then we're going to to do vocabulary and comprehension and oh, we don't have enough time for writing. We do that after school instead of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. So it's, that's what we mean by integrated. So what, we are going to have the opportunity to listen.

We're going to have the opportunity to read, we're going to have the opportunity to write about it and share what we writing. And Steve Graham talks also about the process ofgetting to that written composition. And we don't spend enough time on this. And [00:32:00] perhaps, you know, it's like, oh, what gets taught?

What gets taught is what gets tested or what gets tested, gets taught. And so I just hate that we're at that point, but we really need to do better. And so we work with these schools and school districts on, let's really look at what you're doing and how we can be more strategic and streamline what we're doing and really think about listening is not one part and then reading another part.

Right. And then writing another part. No, it's the opportunity to gather so that it's integrated in what we do. And, we need to really work towards teacher preparation, having that lots of opportunities I think about speech and language pathology. When we are in our training, we get the opportunity to really practice our skills, in a setting that's supervise.

And then when we come out and we've graduated, we have [00:33:00] an extra nine months of mentorships where we have to demonstrate that we can implement these skills that we've learned about and we practice, and that we're able to really get to that. And so it's like we know about what people will call, you know, the research base, the evidence base or the science of reading, but what about that science of teaching and that implementation science? You know, we need so much more in that area. 

Dr. Danielle Scorrano: Yes. And that's something that gets me so excited, so jazzed to talk about the science of teaching being prepared to teach. I want to circle back to Steve Graham. Okay. We at The Windward School, Windward Institute, love Steve Graham- Writing Next, Writing to Read,, and all that work of the reading, writing connection is so important.

When you talked about the integration of reading, listening, oral language and writing, it's true. You said time, I kept thinking of the intentionality of time, right? It is a finite resource. There's so much [00:34:00] happening in our school day. But what you talked about really is being strategic about the time of integrating content area instruction, of writing, of reading.

And it really is when you see that explicit, systematic instruction, I think of the cohesion and the coherence of curriculum as being fundamental. So school leaders, teachers who are listening to this and thinking about, you know, oh, we have a piecemeal program. That's not gonna be as effective as what is that coherence of curriculum.

So I love what you talked about that. The second piece I wanted to talk about in, in coming from explicit systematic instruction of advancing the science of reading in that way is then focusing on students with reading difficulties and disabilities. Let's say I have a child who in preschool or pre-formal education, and what I mean by that is they haven't been taught yet or explicitly taught to read, and they're an English learner, [00:35:00] right?

And so your expertise is in screening, and you talked a little about identification. So how do we leverage the screening practices and then subsequently, the intervention for English learners who demonstrate a reading difficulty? 

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: Right. So, first of all, I would like to say, and I actually evaluate, and have evaluated for you know, more than 30 years, in young students.

And what I want to alert you to, what I want to describe is when students have issues. For example, you heard me talk about language as the foundation for reading. So when young students aren't speaking like the other students, their peers, when they're having trouble producing sounds, and not all sounds are in a child's repertoire at four or five, it's [00:36:00] not until about the age of six to seven that they really get all the sounds of the language in place, right?

But what we see for example, is that children that have these like speech sound disorders or already having trouble understanding language, that places them at risk for future reading difficulties. We do know that, and what we have in this country is we, you know, have tools available in English tools available, for example, in the language of Spanish.

Now we're really thinking about, and I'm in a team of people that I'm just so honored to work with, that we're really trying to look at what we call a truly minimally, bilingual and biliterate kinds of screenings. And now with new technology and AI, you know, what are the [00:37:00] possibilities? And so we're having those discussions, writing about it, and really thinking about what the future will hold that if we have enough in technology that can really understand through that what the child is saying and can we really capitalize about that and get a true, you know, minimally bilingual, bi-literate score.

And so there's been a lot of work in, you know, in speech and language looking at that and we're doing more in looking at that in reading. And then that way it's not, you know, typically what happens in schools today is, okay, let me look at their native language score, their home language score.

Let me look at their score in the second language. And you also have to look at what have been the opportunities, the language of instruction model. And what we always do is look at, you know, what's the history, what's been the opportunity? But we want to understand and. Just to the total child, you know, what have they had the [00:38:00] opportunity for?

What has been the language of instruction model, right? How are they responding? Are they responding in a bilingual, bi-literate manner? And if so, we give credit for that. We honor it, we understand it better. We know where they are. I think that's so important. And I give the example, so there's many things, there's been some, kind of meta-analysis done of looking at, you know, what are those early signs and those early signs, of oh, guess what - being able to, tell me about, you know, what sound you hear at the beginning of the word, or tell me about, can you tell me the rapid naming of things. There's been some look at, with students who are multilingual. But I think the future holds so much more. But we know enough to know, okay, here's these little things that we should be looking at in the early years.

And we find that, and from researchers also [00:39:00] across other countries, kind of that they're finding the same things as well. And as we're worried about over identification, you're not there to identify a preschooler kindergarten student for a reading disability. You're there to think about what? Teaching, teaching, teaching. And I only become fully concerned about that is when we teach, teach, teach and the students aren't responding as, you know, we think they should in comparison to their peers. And so I think there's a lot of opportunity. There's some national funding, there's some private funding, and there's a bunch of projects going on right now in screening for these students.

And so we're very pleased about that work and that opportunity. And it's exciting to see where we are now. And I think through technology we're going to be able to do much better. 

Dr. Danielle Scorrano: Yeah. [00:40:00] But I hear you saying, what I like what you're saying is using the screening and maybe leveraging the screening to allow the data to tell a story about that child.

And I think that's something that's so empowering. So can you break down a couple of the elements of some of those pieces that would be important for screening? 

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: Right. So no matter if, you know, so we are so lucky to have screenings actually available in a language such as Spanish and languages, like English. And one of the things that we should know about is no matter the language, right? That when we look at that ability to process the sounds and play with the sounds of the language, that is very, very important for future reading ability. [00:41:00] Right. And I mentioned that there's now like a meta-analysis even looking at a rapid automatized naming amongst bilingual students and really seeing that that also can play a role in understanding that future reading ability.

Now when we test really early, we do run the risk of kind of over identifying because they really haven't, that's why we've been having these discussions. Like, when would you do that? Would you do this kind of work like at the middle of the year because you know what they've received at the middle of like a preschool year?

Or do you do it at the beginning? But we know that phonological awareness, that letter sound knowledge, that rapid automatized naming and also even like short-term [00:42:00] memory things, those have been like some predictors of future reading. But we also have to take into consideration what have been the environmental factors and the opportunities that these students have had.

Right? Would've been that home language opportunity would've been that language opportunity, and what has been that phonological awareness opportunity. And that's why I worry about it. Like, if we do it so early, are we more getting at, oh, this is just what we need to teach. And, you know, maybe that's what we need to teach. So having those discussions about when is it best to do that kind of thing. And as we know, if I'm testing in the home language, we know a lot of those skills transfer across languages such as that phonological awareness one that you mentioned.

And there's been many studies on that. And the letter-sound knowledge for alphabetic languages, looking at here's this symbol and, [00:43:00] how's that represented in print. But I have to have been taught that or had that opportunity and the vocabulary. What have we learned about vocabulary and, so that vocabulary growth is going to be so important and that vocabulary ability for that future reading and reading comprehension and listening comprehension and how that could apply to future reading comprehension. So I think we're really looking at that and we're trying to look more comprehensive, you know, in a more comprehensive manner, looking at bilingual language experiences of the child versus the monolingual language experiences of the child.

Right. And we may initially, as you know, coming from a culturally linguistically diverse background that we need to make sure that we're not [00:44:00]misidentified, because of our language experiences. And so that's why it's so important to get the knowledge of the environmental opportunities, the school opportunities.

And we are also looking to see we know that a lot of these reading disabilities are hereditary. They run in families. And so, can we look at that? So for young four year olds, you know, can we look at oral language? Can we look at their listening comprehension?

Can we look at, whether they have any kind of, you know, phonological awareness skill processing those sounds. And once we get to instruct, are they responding to that? So it's really about teaching, teaching, teaching. And we do a lot of testing, but we've got to link our teaching to that data. So data informs instruction. That's what we want it for, [00:45:00] to inform our instruction. 

Dr. Danielle Scorrano: Hmm. And what I hear you're saying, and this is as we're closing up our conversation, some key elements of teaching, teaching, teaching, is of having the skills that educators need, the skill and competencies of explicit, systematic instruction, the findings of the National Reading Panel, and really understanding the integrated approach of what that is.

And then this, with all, with this, right? And in the further integration of how we approach english learners is understanding those cultural and linguistic elements and being responsive to those cultural linguistic elements, which I think is vital. It's not a yes. It is a yes, and, but they're all equally important.

Yeah. And I think hopefully I'm capturing that. And, so my final question before I get to your exciting projects is, in the National Council and Teacher Quality, their recent report, I think [00:46:00] from this year, they showed that 71% of programs dedicate less than two instructional hours to teaching reading to English language learners, which means that most new teachers, they said in the report, enter classrooms without the knowledge and skills to teach English language learners to read. 71%, dedicate less than two instructional hours. And you also, in this conversation, you talked about 3% of teachers are actually ready to teach ELLs.

And, you talked about the. Importance of practicum experiences. And so what insights can you give us, whether it's skills and behaviors that you'd want to share of effective teachers, or just simply what other insights can you give us about the calls for teacher preparation and professional development in this specific area?

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: Yeah. So, as I said, I'd like for every teacher to understand a comprehensive approach to working with students, especially in, you know, we call it structured literacy. [00:47:00] From the students I work with, it's structured multi literacy. What do I need for the teachers to truly understand? I need them to understand that structure in two or more languages.

And I need them to understand that they have to use cross-linguistic and cross-cultural features as a strategy throughout the day in everything that they do. So that means our teachers need to be prepared and understanding the speech sound system, right? And, minimally in two languages, understanding those structures and the most common languages such as English and Spanish.

You talked about Arabic and Vietnamese, and forms like Mandarin or other languages, but understanding about how that speech bound system affects that print and how that print needs to be taught in that cross-linguistic manner and putting it together, understanding the syntax, [00:48:00] understanding these wonderful opportunities for developing vocabulary, you know, the semantics to the cognates, the morphology, but understanding that our ultimate goal is for deep reading and effective written communication. But we never forget about using those culture and linguistically responsive practices. Does culture teach me being culturally responsive? Does that teach me to read?

No. What does it do? It engages me. It motivates me. The linguistic responsiveness. Absolutely. Yes, that makes an impact. But what we find is teachers, when they come into the classroom, they're not prepared for that. And we are really working diligently. I'm involved in some other kind of nonprofit work in really working with state departments working with higher education institutions on how to really ensure that we're comprehensive in our approach on how we're approaching language and literacy for students from diverse [00:49:00] populations and how we're following that up.

It's not only like, oh, this looks good. Okay, here's my syllabus. No, it's how is that delivered and implemented and what's the outcome in that classroom and the impact. That's what we really need to be doing. We're looking for impact and what we have done, and so that is essential. And so I'm delighted to have the opportunity to work with some organizations that are working with state departments, getting them all to talk to one another higher education university institutions working on really making sure that their professors are delivering these comprehensive approaches and so that our future teachers know exactly so when they come out, will they know exactly what they need to know for delivering instruction in in those classrooms. And it's exciting to see that the states, many, many states are trying to get this work [00:50:00] done as well as many universities. And I think, you know what, success breeds success. So when these states continue, like the Mississippi story continues to show these successful, you know, what did they do?

How can we do better? Or these institutions of higher education that are preparing the teachers that are the most highly qualified, you know, what are they doing? And I think once we have many examples of awesome instruction for these teachers, and I think the more we work together in a collaborative manner, the better for all students, including those learning English as an additional language.

Dr. Danielle Scorrano: Thank you for that. And I want to reiterate that piece of the cultural and linguistic responsiveness that you said, and particularly the cultural responsiveness piece, right, is that again, this is an integrated, comprehensive approach, where cultural responsiveness is going to motivate, it's going to make a child feel like they're seen, they're heard, that they [00:51:00] belong.

And I think that's a really important facet of an within a structured literacy, linguistically responsive approach to this. And so I appreciate you talking about that and I wish we had another hour to talk about those elements, but maybe you just have to come back. But talk about a way to empower as we started, we started with empowerment and strengths, and now we're ending with empowerment and collaboration from the classroom, from the teacher to the child, to the family approach, to all the way to state departments and organizations.

So I appreciate that. We have two minutes. So is there anything that you'd like to share beyond your hopes, your calls for the future of research, education, advocacy in education at large? 

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: So, I'm thrilled about getting to work and looking at how we screen children from diverse populations that represent other home languages other [00:52:00] than English. I'm excited about that work. Right now at the University of Houston, we have a model demonstration project for dyslexia. And I'm excited about that work as we work in schools and we're working in really trying to build those network improvement communities and really making sure that everything that we do is, you know, sustainable and scalable and that it has great impact and very diligently working on accreditation of universities.

I know the International Dyslexia Association is very much Focused on that. There's a project called The Path Forward to work with state departments. I'm excited about that work, excited about working with state departments. I'm excited also that, you know, the pandemic was something so terrible, but it was during the pandemic that I, for example, say Texas reached out and said, you know, what can we do, to help students who don't speak English and speak Spanish? What can we help them that struggle? [00:53:00] And from that came this pilot project of really accrediting and certifying bilingual dyslexia specialists.

And I'm excited about that as well. I want all teachers to know how to work with multilingual students. And then I especially want, for those students who struggle, that they have access to the most highly qualified professional that knows what to do, when to do, how to do and why they're doing, right.

And so we're raising thinking educators that have deep knowledge and can really deliver and have great impact so that we can really have literacy for all. And you've heard me probably say that literacy is the bridge to equity, and we're working diligently on that access and that equity for our students.

And I'm so grateful and thankful to be here today to share what [00:54:00] we know, to talk about what we need to do. And most of my day is spent in volunteer work but this is, I think it's my passion. And, when you have knowledge, there's a responsibility. 

Dr. Danielle Scorrano: Mm-hmm. Oh, I love that. Literacy is the bridge to equity. And when you have knowledge, there is a responsibility. 

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: So we must go out and reach and teach all children. And when we know, when you know something, when you know better, you must do better. And I say it's not business as usual anymore. And from this conversation, you've learned not to do business as usual.

You've learned about some extra things that you have to do that are essential for these students, so that they can achieve literacy and meet their life's dreams. 

Dr. Danielle Scorrano: Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan, I am beyond grateful for this conversation. Thank you for being [00:55:00] on the READ Podcast and sharing your expertise and your insights.

I just want to sit in this inspiration and your expertise. So thank you. Thank you, thank you so much. 

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: Thank you. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it. Thank you. 

Dr. Danielle Scorrano: Hmm. I am savoring those words from Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan. Literacy is the bridge to equity, and when we have the knowledge, it is our responsibility to do something with that knowledge. 

You can learn about Dr. Hagan's work and my top READ bookmarks or top moments from each episode by visiting each episode page at readpodcast.org. As you learn from our READ experts, I invite you to check out The Windward Institute's Fall Community Lecture and our professional development offerings featuring core reading and language classes, and brand new learning bundles on reading comprehension.

If you have any thoughts, questions, or ideas of topics and speakers, feel free to reach out via email at info@readpodcast.org. 

I also invite you to like, subscribe and share the READ Podcast with [00:56:00] friends and colleagues, and that includes rating the Read Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can also like or follow The Windward Institute's and The Windward School's social media pages to find out more about upcoming speakers, episodes and events. 

Until next time, READers.