This week, we'll hear about the second edition of When Kids Can't Read: What Teachers Can Do, 2e. 

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Below is a transcript of this episode.

Edie:

Hi this is Edie, welcome back to the Heinemann Podcast. This week we’ll hear about the second edition of When Kids Can’t Read: What Teachers Can Do by Kylene Beers.

Kylene sits down with secondary teacher Jen Ochoa, who teaches in New York City, to reflect on the history of the book and the journey to the new edition.

Kylene Beers:

Hi, Jen. It is great to be sitting here with you.

Jen Ochoa:

It's great to be sitting here with you too. And I was thinking about it as we were preparing for this, and it's going to be 20 years ago, probably Monday, 20 years ago Monday, that I very distinctly remember flying home from wherever we were that year for convention and my teacher mentor, she used to take me to the Heinemann booth when I was a new teacher, actually up until a couple of years ago, and I would get to pick out my one NCTE present book. And that year we both bought the first edition of When Kids Can't Read, and I spent the plane ride home reading it and crying.

Kylene:

Why were you crying?

Jen:

I was crying because I thought to myself, "I've been teaching people in high school who report as people who don't like to read for 10 years, and I didn't know how to do any of this. And I need to go back and find all of them and say, 'Now I can be your teacher. Now I know how to be your teacher. This book is going to help me be your teacher.'" So from the first moment it was published, it was absolutely pivotal in terms of how I worked with the kids in my classroom and they got a better education because you wrote that book.

Kylene:

Oh, that's really nice, Jen. Thank you.

Jen:

Absolutely. So you and I have talked a lot through the process of you getting ready to write the second edition.

Kylene:

Yeah.

Jen:

And I have to say, this is hilarious, at one point I was looking something up in When Kids Can't Read and my copy had a lot of tags through it and underlining and lots of dog-eared pages. And then the thing I was looking for wasn't underlined. And so I started looking and I realized I actually had two copies of When Kids Can't Read that I didn't realize, and each one had been-

Kylene:

Annotated differently?

Jen:

Differently, yeah.

Kylene: 

Yeah, yeah, that's great.

Jen:

So I pretty much annotated the whole book. But as you went back to that first edition to get ready to write the second edition, what did you focus on and what changed for you from 2003 to now?

Kylene:

Wow, that's a question. I think it's important to remember that I had no plan to write a second edition. Maybe at 10 years I thought, "Hey, it's 10 years, maybe I should do a second edition." And then I put that aside. I think Bob and I were beginning to focus on the Notice and Note Signposts, and so that was where my energy was going. But during the Covid years, my husband and I were sitting at home one night and he looked over at the bookshelf and he saw When Kids Can't Read. And he got up and he opened it up and he looked at it and he said, "You realize we're coming up on the 20th anniversary of this book." And I thought that was impossible. 20 years had gone by.

Jen:

It does actually seem impossible.

Kylene:

Yeah. And he said, "Do you want to think about doing a second edition?" And my immediate response was, "No, absolutely not." And for lots of reasons, I loved that book and I wanted it to stand as it was. But he had of course put an idea into my mind. And so I spent some time looking at it and I realized that not only had my thinking about reading changed in some areas, but I had changed and the world had changed and I actually didn't want that 2003 version being the one that represented my thinking currently. So I reached out to some folks at Heinemann and I said, "What do you think of this idea?" And they were extremely supportive. And then I had to start doing the hard work of, "So what am I going to do?" And as I looked at the book, I liked the basic structure in that it's divided into a section on comprehension, a section on what I kind of call word work, which is vocabulary, spelling, fluency, automaticity, reading rate, phonics, and then a section on engagement.

So I liked that clear structure for the book, but I knew within that structure I wanted to pull back on some things and expand on other things. I also, Jen, you know this, do something in the book that was incredibly meaningful to me, which was to start and end each chapter with a letter to a student I taught my first year. So I had to figure out how to handle those letters to George. I didn't want to repeat letters, but I also didn't want to lose who he was as a real kid in the classroom. So figuring all of that out really became sort of the first step I had to go through.

Jen:

So for folks like me who have been using Kids for years and have it lay the groundwork for our reading instruction with adolescents, what would you say to those folks to encourage them to go grab a second copy? What's different so that, "The first copy is great, the first edition is great, but now here's what's so much more in that second edition?"

Kylene:

So I'm going to answer that and then I'm also going to ask you to answer it as someone who's read the second edition. For me, one thing that is very different is the sense of urgency that's in the second edition. I have a much clearer understanding of the deep connection between a literate society and a democratic society, and that is forefronted a lot more in this edition. I think if I go back and I'm generous to myself, the beginnings of that were there in 2003, I've always been highly influenced by people like Louise Rosenblatt, but my understanding of that is a lot richer and deeper. I think there's also a very strong awareness of how much I need to make sure, as a white person, I'm creating a book that is inclusive. And so I really had to do a deep look at not only the children's and young adult literature I was mentioning throughout the book, but who were the researchers that I was relying on.

And so I would say that my depth of understanding of how I've been influenced by many, many, many voices in the past 20 years has changed considerably. And that's reflected in the book. And then real practical things. I used to tell kids, even through the writing of the first edition, "Well, you need to make an inference." And they would say, "What's an inference?" I remember this one student... One time I said, "Well, read between the lines." And this student literally stared at the text. And I said, "What are you doing?" She said, "There is nothing between the lines." And I thought, "Okay, so that definition is absolutely not helpful."

And so I've spent the last five or six years really analyzing the exact passages where kids say, "This is where I'm confused," and then identifying the type of inference that has to be made. And so that chapter on literally how do you help kids make a difference in their thinking with making an inference is brand new. And then of course, because of the work Bob Probst and I have done on during reading, that whole section is really expanded. So what did you think of that section on making an inference?

Jen:

That's the golden ticket section right there. I would say... So a little context. In 2003, I was a high school teacher and I teach in New York City and I taught at a school that was predominantly boys because it was a career and technical education school that was specifically with construction and building trades and auto. And the class that I taught was ninth graders who it was called Literacy at the time because the kids in that class had earned a level one on the New York State ELA test in eighth grade. So they got immediately put into literacy class, and they had a lot of evidence from their history as a student that they were not good at reading. And the evidence didn't come from inside them. The evidence came from outside of them. And they knew that they were in that class. There were two teachers in that class.

So when I came back from NCTE that year and I said to my co-teacher, Ann, "You have to get this book. We have to read this book, we have to start doing it," we honed in on inferences. Because we knew that what was happening with kids... And back in 2003, the graphic novel industry was not as gorgeous as it is now. And so the kids would be reading chapter books, middle grade and YA chapter books, and they would just skim past stuff, just keep it moving, and then they wouldn't know what was going on. So we thought inferencing was really important, and we did a lot of the strategies from the book. And they liked saying that they were making an inference because that sounded fancy. It sounds like, "I'm making an inference." "Well, I'm making inference." "Well, I made four inferences."

And when Ann and I would look at their entrance tickets and exit tickets and the work that they were doing within their reading notebooks, the things that they were saying were inferences weren't necessarily inferences. And we were using the strategies and we kind of didn't know how to correct that course. And I love that this chapter is literally like, "This is a specific kind of inference and this is the way the words look in the book and this is how the sentences sound. And this is what your brain should be doing when you come upon sentences that sound like this. It means this thing, so be thinking this thing." Because now that is the course correction. That chapter is the course correction. So if you're someone who has long used the first edition, the inferences chapter is worth the second edition, I'll say.

Kylene:

Well, that's great to hear. I know that in the fourth section of the book, I guess it's the fourth section, which is sort of the engagement section, there's completely new information on what makes something relevant to kids. I really tried to expand that whole definition and make it clear that interest and relevance are very different. And then also to push into understanding what makes something a best practice. I think that's a term we throw around all the time but really don't have a strong understanding of it. So I had fun writing those parts that were very new.

And I also enjoyed going back to some of the strategies that I'm never going to let go of and say, "Okay, how does it look different in a world that's digital? How does it look different in a world where kids are more connected to a screen than they are to a page?" And so that kind of thinking was just fun for me to have done. So Jen, one of the things I did in the first edition, and obviously because of the times did not let go of it in this edition, was I've got a chapter on, because this is really a book for fourth grade on up, making sure teachers really understand what phonics means. And I want it clear that this wasn't just dropped in in 2023.

Jen:

No, that's in the-

Kylene:

That's in the first edition.

Jen:

... 2003 edition.

Kylene:

Yeah. And because in 2003, we were dealing with reading wars back then as people were saying, "Oh my gosh, look at what this blue ribbon panel of educators has said we need to do." And I've always been someone who thought kids ought to know how letters and sounds work. And then I think it's up to individual teachers and individual districts to decide how that's going to play out in those classrooms. Who would I be to suggest how that ought to play out? But I included that chapter again. I even started it the exact same way I started it in 2003 purposely and said to folks, "These are the same words," because I wanted them to see that some things haven't changed. As a teacher reading that, what did it feel like to have the author say, "Okay, here's how I started it back then?" Did you think, "Oh my God, she just didn't want a new beginning?"

Jen:

No, actually things haven't changed. I think the landscape of classrooms have changed, and I think who we focus on who's sitting in our classrooms has changed. Right now, one of my general education eighth grade classes has nine kids in it who've moved to the United States from either Mali or Yemen since sixth grade. And so the phonics chapter is the thing I pull out because I'm their teacher in a regular general education eighth grade class and I'm teaching them how to read. So it used to be that we would say as secondary teachers, "Well, no one ever taught me how to do that, and I don't usually have to do that." And I don't think as folks are moving around the world more as the world is changing and as we talk about who's in our classroom and how we're servicing those children as their teacher, I think that becomes more and more important. It's not just a reading war thing. It's like, "Actually, I do need to know how to teach phonics."

Kylene:

Well, or at least I think we need to know what it means-

Jen:

Exactly.

Kylene:

... when someone says, "Do you teach phonics?" I think a lot of times when parents might ask us that question, they're not even sure what they mean by that.

Jen:

And that it's not necessarily appropriate to teach a whole eighth grade class phonemes, but I need that information as a teacher. And also, what is the nitty-gritty kind of stuff of reading? What does that look like for an eighth grader or a ninth grader, which is, "This is how you make inferences. Now we're not talking about how the words sound, how the words look, we're talking about how they all work together in your brain."

Kylene:

Or one of my favorite parts in the vocabulary section is, "Okay, kiddo, you're probably not going to stop every time there's a word that you don't know what it means." Honestly, when I'm reading, I don't stop every time there's a word that strikes me as a new word. I kind of keep reading to see if the context will help me figure it out. And if it doesn't, sometimes I might decide to look it up. But do you notice your students don't just rush to a dictionary?

Jen:

The last lesson I taught before I got on a plane at one o'clock on Wednesday was what happens when you come upon a word you don't know because it was a Words in Context lesson. And four different people raised their hand and said, "Keep it moving. I keep it moving unless I can't figure out what's going to happen. If I'm confused, then I ask somebody." Some people said they sounded it out, but mostly they just...

Kylene:

Well, that's why that section in the book that says, "Okay, if we want kids to use the context as a clue, then we actually have to teach them how to do that." Because just continuing to read without continuing to ask yourself some questions about that word really doesn't solve the problem. It just means we kept reading.

Jen:

Right. And we used actually strategies from that book on Wednesday to look at that.

Kylene:

That's great. That's great. So you said something earlier about teaching with the book or something like that, and it reminded me you teach at a university?

Jen:

I do. I teach at Lehman College, which is one of the City University of New York campuses. It's in the Bronx. I've been an adjunct professor there for a really long time. And the first edition of Kids, every semester that I've taught reading methods, that's been our textbook. And I still get text messages and emails from students I had 10 years ago who say, "Just so you know, I'm still using this book in my classroom. Just so you know, this book is one of the main texts that I use to write my lessons."

Kylene:

So Jen, the book is designed to be a handbook. And so you open up the inside front cover and there's this full-size chart that has this if-then feel to it, "If your kids can do this but they have trouble doing this, then they need to learn how to do this and read these chapters," so that people can go directly to the sections they need. And yet it also has a narrative feel to it because of the letters to George.

Jen:

Right.

Kylene:

Tell me, how do you read it? Did you read it all the way through, or did you read it as a handbook?

Jen:

Myself, clearly I did both because I had two copies and it was completely marked multiple times in different ways. In that class, we look at it as a handbook and folks have to pick a kid and do a kid reader study-

Kylene:

Oh, in your class in university. Yeah.

Jen:

In my class, my graduate class, yeah. And they look at those end pages and they kind of think about the kid that they've talked to and they interview the kid and then they have the kid read out loud. And they use your work to sort of diagnose what to do next with the kid as their reading teacher. And then they go through and read those chapters and then they talk about as a class... Some of them are pre-service teachers and some of them are teaching fellows so they're alternative certification teachers. So they're already in classrooms as they're getting their master's degree and they talk about what's their plan of action with that kid based on the book, based on Kids.

And they discuss how that's different from other people's plans of action because they're all working with different kids. Which was a really rich discussion because that's what I do with it as a teacher in my eighth grade classroom. I think about the different kids I have and who needs what and what do we need as a whole class. And so which strategies are going to be whole class and which strategies are going to be what I'm working with one or two kids with in reading conferences during independent reading.

Kylene:

I had a teacher send me an email one time, and she said that she had her copy, the new copy, second edition of When Kids Can't Read, on her desk. And a student had come up, wanted to ask her a question, she was busy. He saw the book, picked it up, took it back to his desk and started reading it. And he came up to her afterwards and said, "These are really good ideas. We've got to do some of these." And I thought, "That's the best endorsement ever for this seventh grader to say like, 'This stuff sounds really pretty good. We should try that.'" Yeah.

Jen:

There you go.

Kylene:

Each section of the book also starts with one of those if-then charts.

Jen:

I love that.

Kylene:

Well, that's what I wanted to know. We spent a long time putting those together. Is that helpful at all?

Jen:

It is really helpful. And it's helpful... I liked them in the end pages, but I kind of liked them... I liked the newer-

Kylene:

Point of views?

Jen:

Yeah, I liked the newer versions of them at the beginning of each chapter. I really, really like that. And I think it's helpful... As a teacher, I am not sure if folks who aren't in classrooms with kids know about the time crunch we have as teachers, but we have less and less time to do any kind of planning work and more and more planning work that we have to do. And so that aspect of the book is key to helping with the time management of planning. Because you can easily locate what you need and see, "Is this the chapter that is going to give me the information and the strategies I need for my next lessons?"

Kylene:

That's great. Well, Jen, thank you so much. Any last comments that you would ask me or make about the book?

Jen:

I want to ask you one thing. What did you decide to do with the letters to George, so folks know? Because people are attached to George.

Kylene:

Yeah. Well, we've all taught George. Because George was a kid who could not read and was deeply, deeply mortified by not being able to read. And I began looking at him. I taught him my first year and I had no idea how to help this kid. And yet I know on any day had I done something well, he would have forgiven me for all of the times I had not done something well. So I had taken copious notes about George that year for no reason other than trying to figure out what to do with him. I'm a secondary certified English teacher. I didn't have courses in how to help kids who didn't know how to read. So in that first edition, I really pulled from my early journals where I had taken notes from him. Anything that is quoted with George saying he actually did say.

In the second edition, I kept that same rule. If I quoted something from George, I have a record written down somewhere where he said that. And the beginning chapter letters are still tied to what that chapter is about. So a chapter on vocabulary is going to have conversation where George is talking to me about something to do with vocabulary. The end chapter letters are more about my thinking about teaching.

And so they touch back to George, but they push us more into all of the issues we're dealing with right now, whether it be censorship, whether it be racial issues, whether it be time constraints, no matter the issue. And you probably felt that it was a lot more me. And it's not that I think people are rushing to read, "What is Kylene feeling?" I think that the feelings that are discussed generalize to all of us.

Jen:

Very much so.

Kylene:

So I'm thinking of the letter where I said, "No one told me." And it's that long litany, everything that I thought I understood about teaching but no one told me. And I think we all have our own list of, "No one told me." So I handled the letters by going back to my journals. They're all new letters, so you get to see a little bit more of George, but you also get to see a little bit more of me.

Jen:

And also how you've grown as a person who understands reading in the world.

Kylene:

And do you see that in the book?

Jen:

Oh, yeah.

Kylene:

Yeah.

Jen:

Yeah, you do.

Kylene:

Thank you, Jen.

Jen:

Thank you for writing a second edition.

Kylene Beers, Ed.D., is a former middle school teacher who has turned her commitment to adolescent literacy and struggling readers into the major focus of her research, writing, speaking, and teaching. She is author of the best-selling When Kids Can’t Read/What Teachers Can Do, co-editor (with Bob Probst and Linda Rief) of Adolescent Literacy: Turning Promise into Practice, and co-author (with Bob Probst) of Notice and Note: Strategies for Close Reading and Reading Nonfiction, Notice & Note Stances, Signposts, and Strategies all published by Heinemann. She taught in the College of Education at the University of Houston, served as Senior Reading Researcher at the Comer School Development Program at Yale University, and most recently acted as the Senior Reading Advisor to Secondary Schools for the Reading and Writing Project at Teachers College.

Kylene has published numerous articles in state and national journals, served as editor of the national literacy journal, Voices from the Middle, and was the 2008-2009 President of the National Council of Teachers of English. She is an invited speaker at state, national, and international conferences and works with teachers in elementary, middle, and high schools across the US. Kylene has served as a consultant to the National Governor’s Association and was the 2011 recipient of the Conference on English Leadership outstanding leader award.

Kylene is now a consultant to schools, nationally and internationally, focusing on literacy improvement with her colleague and co-author, Bob Probst. 

Jennifer Ochoa was named Lehman College’s Adjunct Teacher of the Year in 2020. Jen has been an adjunct instructor in the Department of Middle and High School Education at Lehman College since 2006, teaching pre-service and in-service teachers in the English Education program. Jen's deep knowledge of teaching and learning comes from her experience as a high school and middle school teacher since 1992, both in Lansing, MI and New York City. She currently teaches 8th grade English Language Arts in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan.