Get to know LIFT (Literacy Intervention for Teens) by Storyshares with a Q&A with Director of Education, Shira Engel.
Tell us a bit about you and how you landed at Storyshares.
Before I started working at Storyshares, I was a middle school Humanities teacher and dyslexia specialist. These were two separate jobs. By day, I taught my students how to analyze primary sources. I facilitated literature circles with grade-level books and spent hours scouring the internet for supplemental materials that would allow me to differentiate instruction. Then, after school, I used a structured literacy program to tutor older students in foundational decoding skills. I taught them how to break down multisyllabic words using multisensory techniques and used the resources I had at my disposal (which were all created for much younger students) to further their reading fluency.
At the same time, I began to hear the term “science of reading” everywhere, not just in the alumni newsletter for my dyslexia specialist program. A state mandate required my school to adopt a Science of Reading-aligned curriculum for grades K-2. A committee was formed. Curricula were evaluated based on their interpretation of structured literacy. All of these were tremendous gains. The problem? My seventh and eighth grade students wouldn’t benefit. They felt like afterthoughts. I felt angry and I did what any angry English teacher would do. I wrote about it. In an effort to find likeminded teachers, I published an article in Chalkbeat, where I expressed my fear that we were leaving older students out of this national embrace of the science of reading. I had no idea that article would change my life.
Two days after it was published, I received a message on LinkedIn from Louise, the founder and CEO of Storyshares, asking to talk. The rest… is history.
What gave you the idea to create LIFT?
It wasn’t my idea! The more we shared our decodable and high-low books with teachers and school districts, the more they asked for educator materials and lesson plans that they could use with the books. We created so many one-off resources. It wasn’t until we started a year-long partnership with HILL For Literacy, creating a curriculum for a school district in Massachusetts, that I realized that what we created was a literacy intervention. We developed and iterated on it for the teachers and students we were serving. They came first. LIFT came second.
Aren’t there plenty of reading intervention programs out there? What sets LIFT apart?
There are plenty of reading intervention programs out there… and they are amazing! They use explicit instruction to teach students how to decode, encode, and read fluently. However, the vast majority of these programs are for either grades K-2 or grades 3-12. Neither of those broad ranges center the lived experiences and unique learning styles of teenagers and pre-teens. I don’t know about you, but in my experience teaching middle school, teenagers are really good at knowing when something wasn’t created with them in mind. (I have seen intervention workbooks thrown across rooms, stuffed in the trash, and scribbled on with permanent markers.) LIFT is created for teens and pre-teens (even and especially teens reading at the most basic literacy levels) and their teachers. Everything — from the diverse and engaging decodable and high-low books, to the professional learning, to the cadence of the lesson plans — is designed to meet the unique needs of adolescent striving readers and the educators who support them.
What is the biggest challenge in teaching teens to read?
I think most of the challenges are systemic. The others are social-emotional. Teaching teens to read requires time, space, and trained educators. Programming intervention into the school day is an even bigger challenge for middle and high schools (which departmentalize learning into separate subjects) than it is for elementary schools. That, on top of the fact that learning to read when you are older is stigmatized, makes it challenging to consistently engage and motivate older students and give them control of their literacy journeys.
What is the best part of teaching teens to read?
I firmly believe that teaching is about relationships. Teachers who take the time to get to know their students are better able to teach them. Teenagers are hilarious, empathetic, and firing on all cylinders. They have well-developed interests, thoughts about the world (and how to change it!), and are overall fascinating people. All of that is an asset when it comes to teaching reading in grades 6-12. With careful planning and books that center their experiences, we can use our knowledge of teenage students to our (and their) advantage, accelerating their literacy growth through making it fun, relatable, and engaging.
What is something people don’t often realize when it comes to teaching older striving readers?
With older students, we don’t have any time to waste. We can’t teach literacy skills in isolation; we have to teach them all at once. Phonics instruction has to also be an opportunity to support students with vocabulary development and knowledge-building. Fluency practice has to reinforce what students are learning in core instruction. Some people might say that’s a big challenge or a hassle. For me, it makes the process of planning instruction that engages and supports older students creative and fun! It’s like a puzzle, the pieces coming together in those moments when students connect to the stories they read, and then again when they are able to connect those stories back to what they are learning.
What is your favorite teaching memory?
I have so many, but it’s graduation season right now so one in particular sticks out the most. I was on a founding team of teachers at one of the middle schools I worked at. That first class of sixth graders I taught was also the first class of students at that school. I developed such strong relationships with that group and was so invested in their literacy growth that I decided to loop with them, so I taught them in grades 7 and 8 as well. We went through so much together (including a global pandemic). At the time, I thought their eighth grade graduation, a true celebration of the school we created together and all we overcame, was the highlight of my career. Fast forward and those students (whose hilarious, thoughtful, and slightly random emails I cherish) are now graduating high school. I have a feeling that attending some of those high school graduations will be a highlight as well.
Anything else to add?
The vast majority of teacher education programs at both the BA and MA levels do not teach the science of reading to prospective teachers of teenagers. They operate with the assumption that when students enter the sixth grade and beyond, they go from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.” The task of teachers of striving older readers is to help students learn to read while reading to learn. This is no small feat and will require teachers to be well-versed in the multi-pronged approach of structured literacy. When we train teachers in a layered Science of Reading-aligned approach like structured literacy, educators can teach reading to learn and learning to read simultaneously. In order to use the science of reading to support striving teenage readers, we need to develop capacity in the teachers of those teenagers. That’s why we are partnering with HILL For Literacy, aligning our intervention program with their instructional routines and professional learning programs, creating a cohesive experience not only for the teenage striving readers, but for their teachers as well.
Want to learn more? Discover the LIFT solution.