Transcript
Welcome to ASHA Network News, a continuing series that highlights issues of interest to ASHA members.
Joe Cerquone: Today I am speaking with ASHA member Steve Griffin. Steve is the Literacy Intervention Coordinator and SLP at Slate Ridge Elementary in Reynoldsburg, Ohio. Welcome Steve.
Steve Griffin: Hi, thanks.
Joe: Steve has written, From one student to an entire district, advocacy transforms literacy intervention, raises student achievement. This is a May 29th, 2007 article in the ASHA Leader. That's an interesting article Steve.
Steve: Well, it's written from a lot of heart and a lot of experience.
Joe: Well good, I guess one question is, in your estimation what's wrong with the old approach to literacy intervention?
Steve: Well it's not so much what's wrong with the old approach; I think that especially it was written from an aspect of public education. Most schools are set up on a wait-to-fail model or more of a discrepancy model where we don't look at data that suggests that our kids might have literacy problems in the future and we instead of trying to be proactive or more reactive with our approach, we wait until there's a problem and then put all our time and energy into solving the problem, rather than trying to prevent the problems from occurring in the first place.
Joe: I see. Steve why do you believe the old approach is still taken?
Steve: I think the main reason for that is that we're slow to react to current research findings about assessment tools and components of effective literacy instruction that actually prevent reading failure. It's more of a professional development; paying attention to research because we know more than ever now about how students learn to read and what happens when reading isn't coming easily. So in order to put research into practice, schools need to implement systematic processes for screening kids and then not only do that but train and inform the people working with the kids of how to do data informed intervention, and then we need to continually monitor those kids progress. I just don't think that occurs enough to really know if what we're doing is working with our children, and because of that we have kids that slip through the cracks and then ultimately are impacted in really adverse ways with their education, because as most people know if you can't read, the public schools really don't work that well for you.
Joe: I see. Well in your case at Slate Ridge Elementary, what caused you to change your approach?
Steve: I changed my approach over a number of years but what really caused me is I was in a school district where I worked in an elementary school, a middle school and a high school and I just ran into too many kids who were past elementary age who are really struggling with literacy related issues. And we started to really dig deep and we found that there are a number of kids who we weren't targeting, we weren't meeting their needs, so we changed some things immediately to try to make sure that they were getting exactly what they need. But what really changed my approach was just understanding the impact of critical early literacy skills such as phonemic awareness, alphabetic principle, oral reading fluency, vocabulary development and knowing that I had something to add to that bottom line when you're talking about literacy achievement.
Joe: Well you've reached that point of awareness, what then prompted you to write your Leader article?
Steve: I work as an adjunct professor at Ohio State, and what prompted me really to write the article is I have a strong relationship with Wayne C. Cordon. Susan Boswell contacted me and said, "Hey, we are doing a series about leadership and vision in the school," and I think that there are a lot of school SLP's today that are kind of pushed into the broom closet. The traditional, people take a traditional perspective on them that they fix R's, S's & L's, but in the meantime schools, parents, students are talking about reading, reading, reading, literacy. The SLP's have something to add to that bottom line. We're well informed on language development, we understand sequential skill development, and we understand the importance of communiqué awareness. So I jumped right in because I did not want to be an SLP where I just bounced from building to building that really nobody knew what I was doing. As soon as I got involved in the literacy I think from a professional standpoint it gave me some leverage, and teachers, administrators, parents and students valued what the SLP could bring to the table and I think to that point they were unaware. So I wanted to write the article, so the next SLP that really wants to get into the literacy side of the practice can say, "Hey look, people out here are doing that," and just raise awareness.
Joe: Well for the full story ASHA members will need to read The Leader article but for now can you give me just one example of the new approach to literacy intervention that you write about?
Steve: The new approach really is kind of geared around three basic beliefs that the prevention of reading difficulties in kindergarten and first grade is much more effective than remediation in later grades, that we have a systematic process for periodically screening kids, and that we are providing data formed intervention instruction for those kids. Now what that instruction looks like, it can look like a number of different things, but the key is that we are relying on the big ideas of literacy; phonemic awareness, alphabetic principle, oral reading fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Our instruction needs to be targeted in those areas and we need to have a way to monitor the progress to ensure that the instruction that we are actually giving the children is helping especially the child who is at risk and struggling.
Joe: Well that's very interesting Steve. ASHA members can find out more by reading Steve Griffin's article in The Leader. Steve, thank you very much for being our guest.
Steve: Thank you very much, I enjoyed it.
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