Welcome to our National Literacy Month series of podcasts, presented in partnership between the Be Podcast Network and Reading Is Fundamental (RIF).

In this episode of Transformative Principal, Jodi Rubin, Senior Vice President of Marketing & Partnerships at Reading Is Fundamental (RIF), discusses the "Rally to Read 100" initiative. Launched in response to declining reading frequency and motivation among children, this initiative aims to encourage children to read 100 books by the end of March. Anyone can participate, and there are incentives for schools and individuals, including book giveaways and social media contests. RIF provides various resources to support the initiative, such as videos, activity sheets, and purposeful questions for each book. Rubin emphasizes the importance of early reading experiences, reading aloud, and community involvement in fostering a love of reading in children. She also highlights the "RIF Literacy Central" website, which offers over 30,000 resources for educators and families.

• Rally to Read 100
• Frequency and motivation of reading was way down
• 100,000,000th
• B&N storytime pick and Random House partnerships
• Read 100 books by the end of the month of March.
• Anyone can participate
• Why community is so important!
• Competition in individual groups.
• Motivation - giving away 10,000 books.
• 100 schools to win 100 books.
• Social media contests
• Every month 2 new videos will appear for the month’s theme (community, nature, changemakers, and more).
• Packets, coloring sheets, and more activities for students to do and use.
• 12 titles for read-alouds - Maxine Gets a Job and Built to Last, for example.
• Purposeful questions for each book they read.
• The power of early reading experiences.
• Importance of reading aloud.
• Enter to get your classroom sets.
• Celebratory event live at Union Square in NY.
• RIF Literacy Central - over 30,000 resources

Please add your bio here:

Jodi Rubin is a marketing strategy and project management leader with more than 25 years of experience in the areas of strategic marketing, brand management, partnership marketing, communications, and strategy development. Jodi currently serves as RIF’s Senior Vice President Marketing & Partnerships and is responsible for the organization’s marketing strategy, communications, and partnership marketing to drive awareness and engagement with the RIF brand and its programs.

Prior to RIF, Jodi was with Discovery Communications serving in a variety of strategic marketing roles in Domestic Distribution and Discovery Education. Jodi oversaw international educational marketing initiatives, new content provider partner efforts, and worked with Discovery’s various networks to bring key initiatives to teachers and students with unique educational content and resources to inspire and engage students.

Jodi also held prior positions at Comsat International, W.B Doner Advertising, and Booz Allen & Hamilton.

Jodi holds a Master of Business Administration from the University of Maryland and a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Michigan.

We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL.

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Dr. Daris McInnis joins Jethro to explore the complex nature of the reading process and the pivotal role that parents play in building literacy foundations at home. Dr. McInnis emphasizes the expertise that parents bring to the table, urging schools to honor and tap into that knowledge. He challenges the assumptions that parents inherently have everything they need to support their child's learning or that lack of engagement signals disinterest. Instead, he advocates for creating meaningful partnerships with parents, giving them a seat at the table, and understanding the pressures they face, such as time constraints.

Throughout the discussion, Dr. McInnis highlights the value of programs like Reading is Fundamental (RIF) and literacy nights, which provide families with tools and strategies to support their children's learning. He also encourages educators to rethink their roles as learners themselves, emphasizing the importance of linguistic expression and understanding students as cosmopolitan intellectuals.

Tune in to discover how schools can better engage families in the literacy process and how transformative leadership begins with meaningful, student-centered conversations.

• Reading process is complex. Starts at home
• At home start understanding the literacy foundations
• Parents have expertise, and we need to acknowledge it.
• Parents' knowledge of how their students’ everyday life impacts learning.
• Schools should honor and seek that expertise out.
• Schools don’t honor parent expertise because they don’t have expertise
• Grandma’s statistics
• Assumption: Parents have everything they need to support student learning (in the way we do it).
• Assumption: People have time.
• Uninvolved or don’t care is not what silence always means
• Giving them a seat at the table.
• What do they need from the school district?
• RIF is a great resource
• Literacy nights - valuable for many reason
• Strategies and tools for parents.
• Linguistic expression
• How do we rethink about ourselves as learners as well.
• How to be a transformative principal? Identify a student that a teacher is struggling to reach, then go into the classroom, and have a conversation with that student. Frame them as the cosmopolitan intellectuals they are.

Please add your bio here:

Dr. Daris McInnis is an assistant professor of literacy in the College of Education and Social Work at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. His research interests include family literacy, reading research, critical literacy, family-school partnerships, and early childhood education. Daris holds a doctorate in Reading/Writing/Literacy from the University of Pennsylvania, serves on multiple advisory boards with Reading is Fundamental, previously taught early elementary grades in Washington, D.C., and currently volunteers as a reading specialist in New Castle County, Delaware. He is also a Pat Tillman Scholar, and an Army veteran who served five years on active duty as an Ordnance Logistics Officer.

We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL.

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Welcome to our National Literacy Month series of podcasts, presented in partnership between the Be Podcast Network and Reading Is Fundamental (RIF).

• How schools have turned off millions of kids from loving reading.
• “We escaped a train wreck because of my son”
• Balanced Literacy 3-cueing.
• Explicit and systematic way to sound out words.
• Kenneth Goodman - founder of whole language, which is what balanced literacy is based on.
• Observational study on how children learn to read.
• National Reading Panel - convened by congress in late 1990s.
• Emily Hanford - Sold a Story Podcast
• Why don’t we have computers teaching our kids to read.
• Kids just press buttons.
• Teaching a child to read is remarkably easy
• Teaching a child who has been taught incorrectly to read is not easy.
• Samuel Orton - Orton Gillingham method of teaching reading.
• Is it the child, or is it us?
• Phonemic awareness is not an inheritable trait, it’s a skill that can be taught.
• Do you teach or let the child discover on their own? Teach the basic skills
• Steps To Reading

About Irene Daria

Today, Irene Daria is a cognitive developmental psychologist and reading tutor to the stars, including the children of Kate Winslet, Tom Brady and Cate Blanchett. Her new book, I Didn’t Believe Him, takes you behind-the-scenes to witness exactly how schools across the country are failing to teach students how to read. At the time of the story she shares in I Didn’t Believe Him, Daria was a graduate student and "just" a mom thrilled that her son had been accepted to one of the most esteemed schools in Manhattan. Sure that he was on the path to a venerable education, she did not listen when her 5-year-old told her that he-like millions of other children-was not being taught how to read in school.

An entire, very painful school year passed before Eric got her to realize he was right. Follow along as Daria begins a perplexing but ultimately empowering journey to save his academic life. She finds herself pitted against well-intentioned teachers and administrators she would have loved to trust if only they weren't so misinformed. The more Daria tries to get the school to see that it-like tens of thousands of other schools across the country is teaching reading all wrong, the more the school insists there is something wrong with her child and not with its teaching.

Although I Didn't Believe Him is about a disturbing topic, it is a joy to read. Its pages overflow with the tenderness and love a mother has for her child and the trust a child has that his mother will make everything right. In addition to sharing her personal story, Daria takes you behind closed doors at a top-rated school to witness how flawed teaching methods are causing millions of kids to struggle with reading. You will see how a child's struggles in school affect the entire family. In an entertaining who-dun-it way, you will learn about the horrifying history of reading instruction in our country and the absurd way reading is currently being taught in many schools.

In the end, simply by going on this life-altering journey with Daria and her son, you will learn how to teach a child to read and will be empowered to set any child on the path to becoming a proficient reader.