Podcasts

This week, we sit down with Joan Sedita, founder of Keys to Literacy and author of The Essentials of Adolescent Literacy, for a conversation that covers fifty years of fighting for older striving readers.

This week, we sit down with Liz Norton, former middle school teacher and founder of Incessantly Relentless Leadership, for a conversation that zooms all the way out. Liz has seen education from every angle — classroom teacher, interventionist, literacy coach, district leader…

What does the Science of Reading actually look like in a secondary classroom? Ninth-grade ELA teacher Allison McManus joins us to talk about bringing evidence-based literacy practices to older readers—from decoding The Odyssey to harnessing the surprising power of syntax. We dig…

This week, Shawn Robinson, PhD — creator of the graphic novel series Dr. Dyslexia Dude — joins us to share his story.

This week we sit down with Kevin Smith, adolescent literacy expert and co-founder of the Adolescent Literacy Alliance, to talk about building the systems that older striving readers deserve. Kevin is one of the minds behind the Self-Study Guide for Implementing Literacy…

This week, Melanie sits down with Storyshares Chief Academic Officer Shira Engel to give you the PD you wish you'd had — breaking down the key terms, acronyms, and foundational concepts that come up again and again in the adolescent literacy world. No jargon. No gatekeeping…

This week, we sit down with Dr. Julia Yi, adolescent literacy researcher and assistant professor at MGH Institute of Health Professions, whose team has been doing groundbreaking research on the language and literacy gap for adolescent learners.

This week, we sit down with three former students of Storyshares CEO Louise Baigelman and Chief Academic Officer Shira Engel — young people who came to them as older students with gaps in their literacy skills and who, with the right support and the right books, transformed into…

Malcolm Mitchell won a Super Bowl. But he'll tell you that learning to read was the harder — and more important — victory.

This week, Lynni Nordheim, District Dyslexia Specialist and Director of Adolescent Literacy for The Reading League Colorado, joins us to talk about the social emotional experience of adolescent readers — how shame and avoidance show up in intervention work, what schools…

No guest this week, just Louise and Melanie! After 10 episodes of eye-opening conversations with literacy experts, we're taking a moment to reflect on all that we've learned — both on this journey of building Storyshares, but also, just for fun, some things we have discovered…

We talk a lot about how children and teens learn reading skills. We talk less about whether they have anything to read. In Episode 10, Larry Abrams, founder of the nonprofit BookSmiles, joins us to make the case that book access is one of the most overlooked — and solvable —…

We're off this week, but Melanie pops in to say hello and give a quick book recommendation. Hope everyone is getting a moment to rest and recharge!

"Schools were not built to optimize learning." This week, Michael Horn, creator of podcast and Substack The Future of Education, joins us to unpack what it would take to rethink education for the students actually sitting in classrooms today. From mastery-based learning to the…

What does a student's day actually feel like when everything around them is disconnected? Different teachers, different routines, different language, different expectations — class after class after class. For older striving readers already carrying years of compounding gaps…

What if the time students are already spending on screens isn't the enemy of literacy — but the opportunity?

Literacy improvement can't rest on the shoulders of a single teacher. So what does it actually look like to make secondary literacy a shared responsibility across an entire school or district?

We throw around the phrase "research-based" a lot in education — but is it actually enough?

There's a growing narrative in education that adapting text for struggling readers means lowering the bar. This week, we're pushing back on that — hard.

In this episode, we dive in to what it takes to build a true literacy ecosystem in middle and high school. Melanie McDermott and Louise Baigelman sit down with Dr. Sarah Holbrook, Director of Humanities in Kingston City Schools and co-creator of the SUNY New Paltz Science of…

What would it look like if we truly went all in on adolescent literacy? What if grades 3–12 received the same time, resources, and investment we've dedicated to K–3?

Seventy percent of 8th graders in this country are not reading on grade level. It's a statistic that should stop us in our tracks — and yet, for too long, it hasn't.