The Windward School
The
Beacon The Windward School Newsletter for Educators and Parents Spring 2017
In This Issue Understanding the Brain-bases of Reading Difficulties and the Role of Brain Imaging in the Early Identification and Treatment of Dyslexia By Guinevere Eden, Ph.D. Page 1 Head Lines - Teacher Quality: A Call to Action By Dr. John J. Russell Page 6 Windward’s Answer to Quality Teachers: Reflections on The Windward School’s Teacher Training Program Page 8 Exchange of Knowledge Between Science and Classroom By Danielle Scorrano Page 11 How Science Is Rewiring The Dyslexic Brain By Gabrielle Emanuel Page 12 Alumni Profile: Tina Hinman ‘11 By Heather Pray Page 14
Understanding the Brain-bases of Reading Difficulties and the Role of Brain Imaging in the Early Identification and Treatment of Dyslexia Guinevere Eden, Ph.D. presents Decoding the Reading Brain: Lessons from Brain Imaging on Wednesday, April 26, 2017, at 7:30 p.m. at The Windward School’s Westchester Middle School Campus located at 40 West Red Oak Lane, White Plains, NY. There is no fee to attend this lecture. Reservations are required. Visit thewindwardschool.org/lecture to make your reservation.
Learning to read is a complex task that is uniquely human. This article, written as an Introduction to the 2015/2016 Winter Edition of the International Dyslexia Association’s Perspectives on Language and Literacy “Early Identification and Treatment of Dyslexia: a Brain-based Perspective,” highlights the research that has utilized brainbased measures for the purpose of (1) determining the etiology of dyslexia and related learning disabilities, (2) facilitating its early identification prior to the onset of reading instruction and (3) understanding the neural correlates of successful reading intervention. While brain-based studies have the advantage of building on a large corpus of published behavioral work (in which children of different reading levels have been studied for performance on a range of linguistic and cognitive tasks), brain researchers face new challenges. Not only are there technical hurdles when it comes to scanning children, but the complexities of brain development come into play. The acquisition of reading by the brain is studied amidst the brain’s development of sensory and cognitive skills, and the brain’s anatomical and functional capabilities that support them. All of these are guided by both our genes and our environmental experiences. As such, when biologically-driven development becomes intertwined with intensive school-based learning experiences such as reading, it is difficult to distinguish factors that drive or impede successful reading acquisition from those that are a byproduct of having obtained literacy skills. As such neuroscientists are embarking on study designs (e.g., longitudinal studies) which allow them to disambiguate these contributing factors. Further, this work is couched in the vibrant field of cognitive neuroscience, which has revealed the brain basis for experiencedependent plasticity (i.e., the effects of training on the brain), and examined learning to read from the perspective of “neuronal recycling” (using existing brain areas specialized for a given task, such as object recognition, and diverting them to reading).
Cont’d on page 2
2
Spring 2017 The Beacon
Understanding the Causes of Dyslexia Researchers have spent significant effort trying to characterize the causal role of a range of skills that are measured behaviorally (for example, with pencil-and-paper tests) in the context of reading disability. Over the last several decades, investigators have tried to understand the role of phonological processing skills in typically developing children and those with dyslexia. Are these skills critical to learning to read, or are they best described as a facilitator of reading, modulating the rate of reading acquisition? Researchers have also addressed the possibility that phonological processing may be reflective of having learned to read, and therefore indicate, at least in part, the consequence of children’s reading experiences. Understanding the nature of these relationships is critical to understanding the etiology of dyslexia. The observation that children with reading disability struggle with any kind of processing is not sufficient evidence to say that this processing weakness is the cause of their dyslexia; it could also be viewed as the consequence of their compromised reading experience because of their dyslexia. In order to be more specific in their characterization of the etiology of reading difficulties, researchers have relied on studies using reading-level-match or longitudinal designs (Goswami, 2003). For a reading-level-match study, children with dyslexia are contrasted not only with controls matched on chronological age, but also with younger typical readers matched to the children with dyslexia on a reading level. Differences found between the group with dyslexia compared with both the age-matched and reading-level-matched groups would suggest a causal role in dyslexia. Longitudinal studies, on the other hand, have used within-sample correlational analyses of behavioral measures over time. For example, in a landmark longitudinal study conducted by Wagner and Torgesen (Wagner et al., 1997), more than 200 children were tested at the onset of formal schooling (kindergarten) on a range of cognitive and language skills and followed over first, second, third and fourth grade of elementary school to help elucidate which early measures predicted later reading performance. This kind of work has revealed that specific measures of phonological processing and other oral language skills exhibited by young children are predictive of later reading performance: children with weak performance on these measures in kindergarten or earlier tend to exhibit weaker reading skills a few years later. However, even this kind of experimental approach is not enough to be certain about the cause of the reading difficulty, because the findings could be due to some third factor that is related to both phonological processing and reading (e.g., IQ). As such, researchers use additional experimental approaches to help disambiguate the nature of these relationships, for example, by empirically testing the effect of training the skill in question (that is, targeting
phonological awareness skills). Critically, the outcome on which researchers focus is not only whether training in phonological awareness increases the capacity of this skill itself, but whether it generalizes to reading.
Recognizing the Signs of Dyslexia As described above, the approach to understanding which skill differences in children with dyslexia reflect the etiology of their reading disability has been multifaceted. Charting the behavioral atypicalities from the very beginning of formal literacy instruction, as was done in the longitudinal studies, has been crucial for advancing current etiological models of dyslexia. Furthermore, discovering the antecedents of successful reading acquisition also gave researchers, educators, and clinicians the ability to recognize early warning signs of reading failure. This is critical for early identification of children with dyslexia, and early identification can lead to early intervention. When appropriate intervention is applied early, it is not only more effective in younger children, but also increases the chances of sparing a child from the negative secondary consequences associated with reading failure, such as decline in self-confidence and depression. What are the early signs of reading disability, and how can they be noted at the individual level? Many of the very same measures that were used experimentally a few decades ago are now used commonly in the form of norm-referenced tests. These estimate, for example, the performance of a single child’s phonological processing skills in the context of the population. Relatively poor performance on these is used as an indication that the child may be at risk for reading difficulties, even prior to entering school, because they exhibit weakness in those skills known to support reading acquisition. As such, early measures that predict reading have significant practical and educational application.
Brain-based Studies on the Causes of Dyslexia The above-described research approaches involving behavioral measures have long been expanded to include a range of brain-based measures using noninvasive technologies such as event-related potentials (ERPs) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). ERPs measure the brain’s response (the average of many waveforms) to a specific stimulus. Structural MRI has been used to quantify gross anatomical (volume, thickness, topography and density) and microstructural pathway properties of neural tissue. Functional MRI has been used to reveal brain activation in response to specific stimuli or tasks performed by the participants and also allows for measures of functional connectivity among brain regions. Researchers have used these techniques to paint a picture of the brain’s signature for reading and how it differs in struggling readers (Eden et al., 2015).
Spring 2017 The Beacon
The significance of this work in the context of the behavioral studies described above is noteworthy in several ways. Brain-based measures may reveal information that is not manifested in children’s behavior. Also, brain-based data may independently contribute predictive power, for example, increasing the ability to estimate children’s later reading outcome above and beyond that of behavioral measures alone. Further, some brain-based techniques are less reliant on asking the child to perform a task. This not only removes the uncertainty about which of a variety of strategies a child may be using to solve a task, but also makes it possible to acquire data in very young children, even neonates who cannot comply with complex tasks. Finally, these approaches sometimes examine brain signals associated with low-level perceptual processes that represent the precursors of skills that are later the prerequisite to successful reading acquisition. As such, these studies significantly broaden our understanding of the developmental timeline and the cascade of events that occur over the years prior to reading instruction, and how they ultimately lead to reading. Brain imaging research is also revealing brain-based predictors of intervention outcome for groups of participants across a range of disorders, including dyslexia. At the same time, there are constraints, which researchers are trying to address. Some brain imaging techniques are expensive; however, the cost is decreasing as the demand and usage increase. The biggest obstacle is that imaging research usually involves large groups of participants. Unlike behavioral studies, which have led to the creation of norm-referenced tests, brain imaging research is not yet at a point where a single child can undergo an MRI scan and researchers can say with strong confidence, based on structural or functional data, that the child has dyslexia or will have dyslexia in the future. Nevertheless, more research and better technology could facilitate this endeavor. Researchers at this point have developed classification algorithms derived from data acquired in participants with dyslexia. What remains to be seen is whether these models can be advanced sufficiently to identify or predict dyslexia, or outcome of intervention for a child with dyslexia, in individual participants for the purpose of significantly enhancing clinical or educational practices.
Early Identification There is strong evidence that the skills needed for acquiring reading successfully develop in the years before children enter kindergarten–but how early, and in what form? Can they be captured with brain-based measures? Some researchers have employed ERPs in longitudinal studies. These studies are crucial because they are initiated in infants and identify brain signals that predict the same children’s spoken or written language skills measured years later. For example, Benasich and colleagues have
3
examined linguistic precursors in the form of nonlinguistic rapid auditory processing (Gou et al., 2011). When measured behaviorally in early infancy, acoustic discriminations of nonspeech stimuli predict language and cognitive outcomes through age 5 in children with a family history of developmental language disorder and even in those with no such history. Ongoing work is examining the effectiveness of early intervention to improve fine-grained auditory processing in babies and its transfer to later linguistic skills that support reading acquisition. Molfese and colleagues (Molfese & Molfese, 1997) have shown that in neonates the ERP response already looks different in those who go on to struggle with learning to read later in life. Remarkably, the ERP response is attained near birth. It is elicited by differences in speech sounds (phonetic contrasts), indicating that early forms of phonological processing skills develop in early infancy, and that their brain basis is sufficiently reliable to allow them to predict later reading outcome. This expands the window of observation for risk of reading disability significantly, literally to the time children are born. Research by others has focused on MRI, which has the advantage over ERP with regard to spatial resolution but is often not used for studies in infants and small children because it requires participants to remain still. Until recently the brain imaging literature for children with normal reading skills and those with dyslexia focused on children of about 10 years of age, on average. However, recently Gaab and colleagues have managed to include participants who are much younger, prior to formal reading instruction, and to follow them longitudinally, thus conforming to the gold standard of studies on development (Rachle et al., 2012). This work provides important insights into the brain-based process of reading acquisition, one of the most complex skills that the brain achieves via daily practice over a period of a several years. The results reveal a network of regions relying on sensory and cognitive processes, some of which are developed prior to–and others alongside–learning to read. Importantly, these neuroimaging studies characterize brain anatomy and function prior to the onset of reading instruction in infants and children who are at risk for dyslexia (because of their family history) and in comparison with children who are unlikely to experience later reading difficulties. This provides early biomarkers of dyslexia and gives critical insight into the brain-based differences of struggling readers when compared with typically developing children at a time when minimal reading acquisition has occurred. The interpretation of these between-group differences can be made with less concern about observations that are consequential to the reading disability, such as less reading experience.
Cont’d on page 4
4
Spring 2017 The Beacon
Understanding the Neural Correlates of Successful Reading Intervention Correctly attributing the brain-based differences in dyslexia goes hand in glove with understanding the neurobiological bases of successful interventions. There have been several studies looking at the change in the brain following reading intervention and these have been summarized in a recent meta-analytical report on the neurobiological changes associated with successful reading intervention (Barquero et al, 2014). This report also examines those studies that identified neurobiological differences between strong and weak responders to intervention at a time following the intervention. They pose the question of whether brain-based markers can be used to anticipate which children will experience the biggest gains from reading intervention. Altogether, this brain-based research on the early identification and treatment of dyslexia should give some insight into the ongoing neuroscience efforts. These have frequently built on behavioral experimental research, primarily with the goal of lending more information in the context of neuroscientific frameworks. While the research using ERP suggests a potential role for brain-based measures as a screener for newborns, this translational aspect of the research has yet to be realized. MRI research faces technical and practical limitations. As such, MRI data is not used for educational or clinical practices and cannot be used to diagnose individuals with dyslexia. However, future research will show if these issues are surmountable and if brain-based measures can play a contributing role in the efforts to reliably and practically identify and treat individuals with reading disability.
References
Barquero, L. A., Davis, N., & Cutting, L. E. (2014). Neuroimaging of reading intervention: a systematic review and activation likelihood estimate meta-analysis. PloS One, 9(1), e83668. http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0083668 Eden, G.F., Olulade, O.A., Evans, T.M., Krafnick, A.J., and Alkire, D.R., (2015) Developmental dyslexia, In G. Hickok and S. Small (Eds.), Neurobiology of Language, Elsevier, Oxford, UK. Goswami, U. (2003). Why theories about developmental dyslexia require developmental designs. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 534-540. Gou Z., Choudhury N., & Benasich A. A. (2011). Resting frontal gamma power at 16, 24 and 36 months predicts individual differences in language and cognition at 4 and 5 years. Behavioral Brain Research, 7;220(2):263-70. Molfese, D. & Molfese, V. (1997). Discrimination of language skills at five years of age using event-related potentials recorded at birth. Developmental Neuropsychology, 13, 135-156. Raschle, N. M., Zuk, J., & Gaab, N. (2012). Functional characteristics of developmental dyslexia in left-hemispheric posterior brain regions predate reading onset. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 109(6), 2156-2161. doi: 1107721109 [pii]10.1073/pnas.1107721109 Wagner, R. K., Torgesen, J. K., Rashotte, C. A., Hecht, S. A., Barker, T. A., & Burgess, S. R. (1997). Changing relations between phonological processing abilities and word-level reading as children develop from beginning to skilled readers: A 5-year longitudinal study. Development Psychology, 33(3), 468-79
Adapted from: Eden, G.F. (2016, Winter, Editor). Early Identification and Treatment of Dyslexia, A Brain-based Perspective. Perspectives on Language and Literacy, 42(1), 7-9.
About the Author Guinevere F. Eden, Ph.D., is a tenured full Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Georgetown University. She is the Director of the Center for the Study of Learning at Georgetown University and former scientific Co-Director of the Science of Learning Center for Visual Language and Visual Learning at Gallaudet University. She graduated from University College London, received her D.Phil. in Physiology from Oxford University, and conducted her postdoctoral training at the National Institutes of Health as a Fogarty Visiting Fellow. Dr. Eden and her colleagues were the first to apply functional MRI to the study of dyslexia. She is currently investigating the neurobiological correlates of successful reading and math interventions. Her work is supported by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. Dr. Eden has published widely in journals such as Nature, Nature Neuroscience, and Neuron; is a frequent speaker in the U.S. and internationally; and has testified on the science of dyslexia before the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. She is past-president of the International Dyslexia Association and serves on the editorial boards of the Annals of Dyslexia; Dyslexia, Brain and Language; Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience; and Human Brain Mapping.
Spring 2017 The Beacon
The Windward School and Windward Teacher Training Institute present the
Robert J. Schwartz Memorial Lecture With Guinevere Eden, Ph.D. “Decoding the Reading Brain: Lessons from Brain Imaging” Date: Wednesday, April 26, 2017 Time: 7:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. Location: The Windward School Westchester Middle School, 40 West Red Oak Lane, White Plains, NY 10604 Reading is a cultural invention. It has to be learned through explicit instructions, resulting in the recruitment and utilization of a variety of brain areas that were not designed to read specifically. This presentation will show how brain imaging technology is used to reveal these brain areas in a range of readers. Brain imaging has been used to test some of the theories that have been put forward to explain dyslexia and to distinguish cause from consequence. Understanding the origin of the difficulty in reading is critical for developing the best avenues of intervention. This presentation will examine the neural correlates of successful reading intervention. Together, this knowledge can be harnessed to bring about positive change for students with learning differences.
Although there is no fee for this lecture, seating is limited. To reserve your place, please register at thewindwardschool.org/lecture
5
6
Spring 2017 The Beacon
Head Lines
Teacher Quality: A Call to Action By Dr. John J. Russell, Head of The Windward School
I
n Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, Thomas Gray penned the verse “Where ignorance is bliss, ‘Tis folly to be wise.” In 1742 when it was written, it had a very different meaning than it does today. Currently, the phrase means not knowing something is often more comfortable than knowing it. While that may be true in some instances, it is most certainly not true when it comes to the lack of knowledge that exists about the quality of teaching, which has long been identified as the most significant influence on student achievement. Acknowledging the importance of teacher quality, the federal No Child Left Behind Act (P.L. 107-110, 2002) required that by 2005-06 all children should be taught by “highly qualified” teachers in the core academic subjects (Palmer, 2015). The general public and far too many educators are ignorant of the disturbing reality that teacher preparation programs simply have not and still do not sufficiently prepare new teachers for the classroom and that state licensing examinations are not rigorous enough to protect students from teachers who are ill-equipped to teach. Failure to adequately prepare teachers and the general public’s misconceptions about the quality of the teaching that their children receive produce effects that are far from bliss for American students in general and for learning disabled students in particular. Simply stated, the consequences have been disastrous: • The United States ranks 24th out of 85 industrialized nations in reading (Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), 2015). • 57 million American adults are functionally illiterate/ below basic in reading (Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), 2012/2014). • Nationally, 66% of 8th grade students are below proficient in reading (National Assessment of Educational Progress, 2015). • In New York State, 61% of all students in grades 3 through 8 are below proficient in English Language Arts/ ELA (New York State Department of Education, 2016).
• In New York State, 92% of all students with disabilities in grades 3 through 8 are below proficient in English Language Arts/ELA (New York State Department of Education, 2016). Many Americans think that the ability to teach is more the result of innate talent than training. But recent research (Goldhaber, Liddle, & Theobald, 2013; Michelli, Dada, Eldridge, Tamim, & Karp, 2016) clearly demonstrates that the best teachers are made, not born. Tragically, teachers are not being adequately prepared to become even effective teachers, no less great teachers. Arthur Levine (2005), the former president of Teachers College, Columbia, summed up the problem by stating that graduate school programs that prepare principals “…range from inadequate to appalling.” Unfortunately, things have not improved in the intervening years. In 2014, the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) released its annual review of teacher preparation programs in the United States. As was the case in previous studies, once again colleges and universities were cited for their substandard preparation of teachers. There remains a significant disconnect between the preparation teachers need to be successful and the preparation they actually receive in their preservice and graduate education courses (Walsh, Glaser, & Denne-Wilcox, 2006). Of great significance to all parents, and especially to parents of learning disabled students, the NCTQ evaluated 687 college and university pre-service teacher education programs that prepare teachers to teach students who are identified as “struggling readers” and found that 75% of these programs did not meet the basic standards set by NCTQ. The most recent edition of Perspectives, published by the International Dyslexia Association (Fall 2016), is dedicated to “Teaching the Teachers Eliminating Gaps to Better Serve Children with Dyslexia (sic).” In it, research findings (Mather, Bos, & Babur, 2001; Moats, 1994, 2009; Spear-Swerling, 2009) are cited confirming “…that many teachers, even those with experience and credentials, have limited knowledge about
Spring 2017 The Beacon
phonemic awareness and phonics and their importance for students at risk for reading problems.” Further buttressing this link between the lack of quality in programs designed to train teachers to teach reading and future student performance, researchers have found that 75% of the students who drop out of school have reading problems (Joshi, et. al, 2009). Adding evidence to this reality, Piasta et al. (2009) found that learning disabled students of teachers who had greater knowledge of reading concepts scored better on tests of reading achievement than their peers whose teachers were less informed. Although lack of adequate teacher preparation disproportionally harms students with disabilities, it has serious negative consequences for all students as well as for the teachers themselves who must suffer the professional and emotional burden of not being able to adequately support the children they work so hard to teach. A recent study, conducted in 2015 by John Hattie of the University of Melbourne, confirmed the dominant effect that teacher quality has on student performance in general. He conducted a meta-analysis of more than 65,000 research papers on the effectiveness of hundreds of interventions on the learning of millions of students and found that what matters most is teacher expertise. The most powerful ways to improve student learning identified by this meta-analysis all depended on what teachers did in the classroom. Every day teachers make hundreds of instructional decisions based on what they have been taught in their pre-service and graduate school programs. Regrettably, few teachers are exposed to research that is relevant to their jobs and are ill-prepared to critically assess scientific claims, leaving them vulnerable to fads and fallacies in their instructional decision making as they search for a program or methodology that will help them teach their students to read and write (Siedenberg, 2012). One way of gauging the impact of teacher quality is to look at differences in the growth of student achievement across teachers. Simply defined, good teachers are those who consistently obtain high levels of academic growth from students, while poor teachers are those who consistently produce minimal or no growth in learning. A substantial number of studies of the effect of teacher quality on gains in student achievement exist, and they clearly indicate how much teacher assignment can impact student learning gains. Stanford economist Eric Hanusek (2016) estimates that during an academic year students taught by teachers at the 90th percentile for effectiveness learn 1.5 years’ worth of material, while those taught by teachers at the 10th percentile learn a half years’ worth. In another study, teachers near the top of the quality distribution got an entire year’s worth of additional learning out of their students compared to teachers near the bottom. Importantly, this analysis solely considered students from minority and poor inner-city families, indicating that good teachers can overcome deficits that might come from challenging living conditions. In an article in The Economist (June, 2016),
Thomas Kane, a researcher at Harvard, estimates that if AfricanAmerican children were all taught by teachers in the top 25th percentile for quality, the achievement gap between black and white students would disappear in eight years. He similarly posits that the performance gap (PISA, 2015) between American students and their Asian counterparts would be eliminated in 4 years if all American students were taught by high quality teachers. So, having a highly skilled teacher teaching your child is a matter of the utmost importance. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence of the lackluster preparation of teachers and its dire effect on students, colleges and universities have been notoriously slow to change their pre-service programs. While The National Reading Panel issued its report in 2000, currently there are only 25 colleges and universities accredited by the International Dyslexia Association as meeting the standards set out by that panel of distinguished reading scientists. Many, but certainly not all, state education departments, school districts, and individual schools have had inadequate responses to the poor quality of teacher preparation. If change is to come, states must make teacher licensing examinations far more rigorous and based on research-based educational practices. This will have a ripple effect on colleges and universities. The economic reality is that for undergraduate and graduate programs to stay competitive their curricula will have to be altered in order for their graduates to pass the more demanding exams. Given the glacial pace of academic change, this will, no doubt, take time. Perhaps, Thomas Gray would have memorialized this hopeful thinking as Ode on a VERY Distant Prospect of an Effective College Teacher Preparation Program. In the interim, if the quality of teaching is going to improve, political and educational initiatives need to be advanced, and parents must become better informed and politically active advocates for their children. If schools are going to improve the quality of teaching, comprehensive professional development is an absolute necessity. Dedicated, conscientious teachers can mitigate deficiencies in their preparation through professional development, but only if professional development programs are more rigorous and of a better quality than the undergraduate and graduate programs that are responsible for the deficits in the first place. In response to this reality, The Windward School has established a professional development program that is comprehensive, demanding, and extremely effective in closing the knowledge gap between research and teaching practices. Other schools have followed a similar path in their efforts to improve teacher quality and in turn, student achievement. While the issues influencing teacher quality are complex, the response of dedicated and well-informed parents, teachers, and schools can result in positive change. Margaret Mead said it well: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
7
8
Spring 2017 The Beacon
Windward’s Answer to Quality Teachers: R Teacher Training Program
T
hrough The Windward School Teacher Training Program, Windward teachers reach a level of expertise and effectiveness that is rarely achieved in the teaching profession. As described in Dr. Russell’s article on page six, “Teacher Quality: A Call to Action,” “Simply defined, good teachers are those who consistently obtain high levels of academic growth from students, while poor teachers are those who consistently produce minimal or no growth in learning.” Standardized test data collected over the last decade confirm the academic growth of students from the time they enter Windward to the time they outplace to mainstream settings. Prior to entering Windward, the majority of our students (approx. 91%) perform in the below-average to average range in reading vocabulary, reading comprehension, math procedures, and math problem solving. Upon exiting Windward, these same students’ test scores saw a dramatic increase. These results show that the majority of Windward students score average to above-average in reading vocabulary (91% of students), reading comprehension (97% of students), math procedures (91% of students), and math problem solving (89% of students). This level of academic growth is truly remarkable and clearly demonstrates the impact that Windward teachers have on their students. In order to consistently achieve results like these, The Windward School makes a significant investment in the professional development of all of its teachers. Windward teachers take over 11,000 hours of professional development each year to to maintain and enhance their expertise in Windward’s proven instructional methodology. The transformative power of the teacher training program is captured in the comments below.
How has The Windward School Teacher Training Program enhanced your teaching?
A Windward lower school teacher assists a student.
Q&A
How has The Windward School Teacher Training Program enhanced your teaching?
“Being a part of The Windward School Teacher Training Program has enhanced my ability to develop and implement lessons that further increase student achievement. From attending Windward Teacher Training Institute (WTTI) courses, professional development classes, and the constant support from administration, I’ve gained the tools necessary for student success. The training never stops. The methods taught are always current and easily translatable to the classroom.” – Ms. Amin, Westchester Middle School “The Windward School’s Teacher Training Program provides teachers with a deep and thorough understanding of language-based learning disabilities and the specific nature of the academic challenges they present to our students. Windward explicitly trains its teachers how to build specific skills that do not come intuitively to our students. I have learned from observing and partnering with exceptional teachers to effectively deliver the skillsbased Windward program.” – Ms. Chalonec, Westchester Middle School
Q&A
What aspects of the Windward Teacher Training Program have been most impactful?
“The support from our department coordinators has played the biggest role in my professional development. The department coordinators at Windward provide oneon-one support to help enhance weekly lesson plans; monitor the fine details of each lesson, such as the balance between simple versus complex questions; and expose our students to new multisyllable words that aid in the growth of their lexicon. Through periodic classroom visits and observations, teachers are made aware of areas to hone in on, whether it be providing more wait time for students responding to a question, or simply rewording questions so that they’re more clear and concise to our students.” – Mr. Smith, Manhattan Lower and Middle Schools
Spring 2017 The Beacon
s: Reflections on The Windward School’s “The professional development I have received at Windward has been valuable and relevant to my growth as a teacher of students with language-based learning disabilities. At Windward, no teacher is alone in their mission to provide students with the skills they need to be academically successful. The mentoring program is exceptional. I frequently consult with other teachers and our specialists and administrators at Windward to get feedback or advice that sharpens my instructional planning and supports my efforts to address students’ academic needs. I feel fortunate to work with such a well-trained, intellectually curious group of people who are all eager to continue learning and growing as professionals.” – Ms. Chalonec “Over the years, I have had the privilege of taking many of the professional development classes and WTTI courses that are taught by instructors who are masters in the research-based programs I use in my classroom. Not only have these professional development courses influenced the way that I teach, they change the lives of our student population. When I first assumed headteaching responsibilities, the support I received from the coordinators was very impactful. I had weekly meetings where we worked on daily lessons and discussed student progress.” – Ms. Iodice, Westchester Lower School
Q&A
coordinators in order to provide students with the most effective and beneficial strategies and skill sets.” – Ms. Brenner, Manhattan Middle School “Throughout all of my years at Windward, I still learn something new every time I sit in a meeting with a coordinator, in a WTTI course, or just with the knowledgeable teachers around me. There are endless ideas that influence my daily classroom instruction and my professional growth.” – Ms. Iodice Being a Windward teacher means that professional development is never complete. To learn more about The Windward School Teacher Training Program, read about The Making of a Windward Teacher at thewindwardschool.org/windwardteachers. For educators and parents interested in courses, workshops, and lectures that address a broad range of developmental and curricular topics taught through Windward Teacher Training Institute, visit thewindwardschool.org/wtti.
How do you continually improve your practice at Windward?
“I continually improve my practice at Windward through our WTTI classes, weekly professional development seminars, meetings with department coordinators, and through our classroom observations. Each observation provides me with a focal point to improve upon. You’re continuously growing at Windward; the resources are in place; and everyone wants to see you succeed.” – Mr. Smith “I work with exemplary coordinators who provide me support and continuous education on the methods and strategies to best use with my students. As a first-year head teacher, I rely on them to expose me to the best practices and strategies for my group of students. Teaching every day requires self-reflection and critique from senior
A Windward middle school teacher assists students in science class.
9
Spring 2017 The Beacon
11
Exchange of Knowledge Between Science and Classroom: Windward Visits the Neurocognition of Language Lab at Teachers College, Columbia University By Danielle Scorrano, Research Associate and Windward Middle School Teacher
T
he Windward School delivers effective researchbased instruction to students by ensuring that classroom practice is informed by current research. Renowned for extensive professional development and educational opportunities for Windward faculty, parents, and the broader education community, The Windward School also fosters relationships with academic and scientific institutions to support the intentional application of research. Recently, a group of Windward administrators and faculty members visited the Neurocognition of Language Lab at Teachers College, Columbia University to learn how their researchers use behavioral measures and electroencephalogram (EEG) brain imaging to investigate speech, language, and cognition processes. The lab’s primary objectives are to gain a deeper understanding about the networks of the brain and to share their findings with the broader educational community. During this recent visit, Lisa Levinson, a doctoral student at the lab, informed the group of visitors about the range of studies that are being investigated by the Neurocognition of Language Lab, including her own current research in the early visual sensory differences in dyslexia. Afterwards, Levinson and her colleagues gave an in-depth tour of the lab and an interactive experience of the brain imaging methods used. The visit culminated in a group discussion around current research in dyslexia and the role of brain imaging to support existing behavioral and theoretical research. The day’s experience sparked new insights about how to facilitate the exchange of knowledge between science and the classroom. Translating proven research into best classroom practices continues to be a challenge in the broader educational community. By learning from and sharing our practices with academic and scientific institutions, Windward demonstrates its commitment to connecting current research to classroom practice.
From L to R: Danielle Scorrano, Betsy Duffy, Jon Rosenshine, Nicole Berkowitz, Chaille Maddox (post-doc at the lab), Ronnie Berish, Beth Foltman, Lisa Levinson (doctoral student), Maureen Sweeney, Diane Happas. Photo by Jon Rosenshine
Chaille Maddox explains to Danielle Scorrano, Nicole Berkowitz, Betsy Duffy, and Diane Happas how she uses EEG technology for her study. Photo by Jon Rosenshine
12
Spring 2017 The Beacon
How Science Is Rewiring The Dyslexic Brain By Gabrielle Emanuel The interview below with Dr. Guinevere Eden, 2017 Schwartz Lecture presenter, appeared on NPR’s Morning Edition on November 29, 2016.
O
ur ancient ancestors were able to speak long before they were able to read or write. That history is etched in our brains.
The human brain naturally picks up spoken language. Not so for reading. “You can think of the reading brain as moonlighting,” says Guinevere Eden, director of Georgetown University’s Center for the Study of Learning. “Your brain will essentially take other brain areas — that were designed to do something else — and use [them] toward reading.” Learning to read requires co-opting parts of the brain and training them to recognize letters, clump those letters together into small units, relate those units to sounds and, eventually, blend those sounds together into a word. For millions of people with dyslexia — the most common learning disability in the U.S. — that process doesn’t come easily. In the basement of a medical building in Washington, D.C., Eden and her team of researchers are using brain scans to figure out exactly what makes dyslexic brains different. They also want to know what can be done to rewire the brain, coaxing it to do what it wasn’t “designed” to do. Surrounded by computers in the control room on a Saturday morning, Eden is focused on 8-year-old Tiffany Hilton. “They are taking pictures of my brain, so they can see how big or small it is,” Tiffany explains. She has dyslexia and is participating in Eden’s research. With a sheepish little smile, Tiffany adds: “My brain is big!” Eden ushers Tiffany into the next room, where a technician helps her lie flat on her back inside a big cylindrical fMRI machine.
are most active during the tasks. For this study, Eden is particularly focused on two areas on the left side of the brain that are key for reading. The first is in the left temporoparietal cortex. It is traditionally used to process spoken language. When learning to read, we start using it to sound out words. “Then after you’ve done that a few times,” Eden explains, “you begin to say, ‘Well, hang on, I’ve done this one before.’ And it seems that your visual system recognizes it by sight.” That’s when things move over to a second area of the brain involved in reading: the occipitotemporal cortex, which is part of the visual processing center. It’s at the base of the brain, behind our ears. A person who never learned to read uses this part of the brain to recognize objects — like a toaster or a chair. But, as we become fluent readers, we train this brain area to recognize letters and words visually. These words are called sight words: any word that you can see and instantly know without thinking about the letters and sounds. This requires retraining the brain. When recognizing a chair, the brain naturally sees it from many different angles — left, right, up, down — and, regardless of the perspective, the brain knows it is a chair. But that doesn’t work for letters. Look at a lowercase ‘b’ from the backside of the page, and it looks like a lowercase ‘d.’ They are the same basic shape and, yet, two totally different letters. But, as it does with a chair, the brain wants to recognize them as the same object. Everyone — not just people with dyslexia — has to teach the brain not to conflate ‘b’ and ‘d’.
And, just like Tiffany said, they are taking pictures of her brain. But they aren’t interested in the size. Instead, the researchers want to watch as Tiffany performs a series of short tasks — things like quickly deciding whether a word has a tall letter in it. From the windowless control room, Eden monitors several computers with images displaying which parts of Tiffany’s brain Source by LA Johnson/NPR Source: LA Johnson/NPR
Spring 2017 The Beacon
So, what is happening in a dyslexic brain? “Both areas are under-activated in dyslexia,” says Eden. Looking at images of those two brain areas — the one involved in sounding out words and the one involved in visually recognizing words — scientists see that they don’t light up quite as much as they do for a typical reader. This under-activation in dyslexia is not associated with low intelligence or poor education, but it does mean that people with dyslexia have difficulty sounding out words. Knowing this, Eden decided to try something: She asked people with dyslexia to participate in a six-week research intervention. Five days a week, for six hours a day, the subjects work in a classroom with a tutor. They do reading exercises as well as letter and number manipulations. This is how Tiffany spent her summer. In a small school off a busy street in Northern Virginia, she’d sit at a low table across from her tutor. Around them were piles of flash cards and laminated sheets.
typically associated with reading, in the left hemisphere, have indeed become more active. But something else happens, too. “Other areas became more active,” Eden explains with subtle excitement. “And they’re not areas you think of as being involved in reading: They were in the right hemisphere.” New areas of the brain start lighting up and helping out with the reading process. Eden says this is similar to what scientists see in stroke victims, where other parts of the brain start compensating. Eden has already done a study like this in adults. Now, she’s studying Tiffany and 47 other kids over the course of five years. If her earlier findings hold up, she says, they would suggest that children with dyslexia should get intensive reading tutoring. Those lessons, she says hopefully, can change how the brain reads.
“Take a picture of the word MEAL,” Tiffany’s tutor said one afternoon as they neared the end of that day’s six-hour session. The tutor was holding up a flash card with the word M-E-A-L printed on it, waiting for Tiffany to take a mental picture of the bold letters. Covering the card, the tutor gave Tiffany a puzzle: “If I erase the ‘A’ in that word, what word would we see?” “Erase the ‘A’? Can I see it again?” Tiffany said, contorting her face in concentration. Then, she ventured a guess: “It would be MEAL? No! It would be MAAL.” With a little bit of help, she figured it out: “It would be MEL!“ This type of manipulation is very hard for people with dyslexia. But over the course of the six weeks, the research subjects practice — a lot. And the researchers can tell. Eden and her team take brain scans of all the research participants before and after the intervention. Studying the images, they find that at the end of the six weeks, the brain areas
Source by LA Johnson/NPR ©2016 National Public Radio, Inc. NPR news report titled “How Science Is Rewiring The Dyslexic Brain” by Gabrielle Emanuel was originally published on npr.org on November 29, 2016, and is used with the permission of NPR. Any unauthorized duplication is strictly prohibited.
13
Alumni Profile
Tina Hinman ’11 1 Pays It Forward To By Heather Pray, Director of Publications
I
n second grade, Tina Hinman ’11 knew she was different from her peers when she started to be pulled out of the classroom on a regular basis to work with her public school’s special education assistant. Now as she prepares to make a choice on where to go to medical school, she feels a sense of accomplishment in not only overcoming her learning disability but also using her experience to help others embrace their differences, too. Frustration from struggling to read and write characterized Tina’s first-grade classroom experience. “While my peers broke into reading groups, I was left alone, unable to participate,” she recalls. “I tried to manage my reading discrepancy by fabricating descriptions of the book’s plotline based on pictures. While this was hardly a practical solution, I cultivated my creativity and perceptual reasoning in hiding my dyslexia.”
Tina Hinman ’11 recently graduated from the chemical engineering program at Washington University in St. Louis and will attend medical school in fall 2017.
In second grade, Tina continued to attend a public school, and her frustration reached its limit. “There was one worksheet where I was supposed to determine the number of different ways several hats could be stacked onto a person’s head – it took me over a week to complete, and my teacher wouldn’t help me or let me move on,” she recollects. “Then I was placed into my own reading group because I could not read at the same level as any of the other kids in my class. Finally, I began to be pulled out of the classroom to work with the special education assistant teachers.”
Spring 2017 The Beacon
15
’1 d To Help Others Embrace Their Differences
s
After this experience, Tina came home and told her parents that she knew she was different from the other students in her class, but she couldn’t figure out why. Her public school advised her parents to have Tina continue in the school’s education program; however, her parents compared her academic progress to that of her sisters and decided she needed more support. Tina’s life changed when her parents enrolled her at The Windward School in third grade. “Attending Windward has had the greatest impact on my life to date. I question whether I would be able to read or pursue any form of higher education without the skills I garnered at Windward,” she affirms. Tina attended Windward through fifth grade – a pivotal year not only for her eventual outplacement back into a mainstream setting but also for her discovery of science as a passion. Since reading and writing were more challenging, Tina found solace in science and math classes. “I think I grew the most with my fifth-grade science teacher,” she acknowledges. “She really encouraged my curiosity and always answered all of my questions with thoughtful answers. She never made me feel bad if they were really simple questions.” Tina also credits Windward for providing her with skills to tackle not only educational issues but also life challenges as well. “Upon returning to the mainstream school system, my teachers were always impressed with my
organizational skills, work ethic, and criticalthinking skills – all of which I attribute to the lessons I learned at Windward.” After leaving Windward, Tina continued her education at The Masters School where she continued to excel in math and science including a course load of chemistry and honors geometry as a ninth grader. “I enjoyed chemistry, particularly the lab component, in high school because of the way the data made the abstract concepts more concrete. I think my dyslexia makes me a more visual learner, so charts and graphs were always easier to understand and learn over written explanation,” she adds. While excelling academically, including being on the honor roll, she also did well in her extracurricular activities including gymnastics and springboard diving. All of this would lead to graduating cum laude from The Masters School in 2011 and being accepted into the chemical engineering program at Washington University in St. Louis. Tina also earned a place on the university’s swim team. After many years of hard work, support, and dedication, Tina decided it was time to pay it forward to help others as she had been helped, by becoming an undergraduate notetaker in her biomedical ethics class. As a notetaker, Tina would capture information in the class on paper for other students unable to do so due to a physical or cognitive disability. She felt great in giving back to her community, but she knew there was more work for her to do to help others.
Tina decided to enroll in two undergraduate courses at Washington University dedicated to understanding disabilities in the context of society: “Images of Disability in Film and Literature” and “Disability, Quality of Life, and Community Responsibility.” “These classes restructured my views about individuals with differences, including myself. Listening to guest speakers with disabilities and witnessing their pride inspired me to take ownership over mine,” she explains. Today, Tina sees her dyslexia as a unique gift. Through her experiences and education, she has built deeper senses of creativity and pride and hopes to take this empathy with her as she moves on to medical school in the fall. “I take comfort in knowing that being dyslexic allows me to think differently than my peers. I believe the ability to visualize and think creatively are important skills that we as dyslexics should feel pride in,” she states. “I hope to continue to disseminate my positive perspectives on disabilities and help others embrace their differences, just as I did.”
16
Spring 2017 The Beacon
Register Today for Spring & Summer and Lectures in Westchester and Man It’s not too late! Register today for these upcoming spring and summer READING SKILLS Multisensory Reading Instruction: PAF Part I Instructor: Phyllis Bertin, M.S. Dates: Thursday & Friday, July 6, 7 Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday, July 10, 11, & 12, 2017 Time: 9:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. Place: WTTI White Plains, 40 West Red Oak Lane, White Plains, NY Course Code: MRIPTI-S171 Fee: $670 (PAF teacher handbook included) This five-session course, taught by Phyllis Bertin, M.S., co-author of Preventing Academic Failure (PAF), focuses on multisensory techniques for teaching reading. Participants will be trained in this Orton-Gillingham-based program for teaching reading, writing and spelling in the primary grades. Utilizing PAF from kindergarten or first grade can prevent reading failure for children with learning disabilities. PAF can also be used remedially for struggling readers or as an effective beginning reading program for all children. Topics will include instructional practices supported by the latest research on developing accurate and fluent reading and comprehension. For teachers of grades K – 6 This course is offered for two graduate credits. There are additional hours, assignments and fees.
Multisensory Reading Instruction: PAF Part II Instructor: Phyllis Bertin, M.S.
Prerequisite: Multisensory Reading Instruction: PAF Part I This course is offered for one graduate credit. There are additional hours, assignments and fees.
Multisensory Reading Practicum: Using the PAF Program Instructor: Keri Levine, M.S. Orientation: Wednesday, July 12, 2017, Time: 1:30 – 3:30 p.m. Course Dates: Thursday & Friday, July 13, 14 Monday – Friday, July 17 – 28, 2017 Time: 8:45 – 11:30 a.m. Place: Off-site in White Plains, NY Course Code: MRIPRAC-S171 Limited Enrollment Fee: $695 + materials In the Multisensory Reading Practicum, participants will implement the skills and concepts acquired in Multisensory Reading Instruction: PAF Part I. Working closely with Keri Levine, M.S., a PAF master teacher, participants receive instructional support and mentoring as they plan and teach PAF lessons to students. During this 12-session practicum, participants utilize diagnostic, formative and summative assessments to enhance instruction; analyze student’s strengths and weaknesses to create individualized lessons and receive instructions and daily feedback from the instructor. For teachers of grades K – 6 Prerequisite: Multisensory Reading Instruction: This course is offered for two graduate credits. There are additional hours, assignments and fees.
WRITING SKILLS
Dates: Monday – Thursday, July 17 – 20, 2017
Expository Writing Instruction: Part One (Hochman Method)
Time: 9:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Instructor: Betsy M. Duffy, M.S. Ed.
Place: WTTI White Plains, 40 West Red Oak Lane, White Plains, NY
In Westchester: Monday – Thursday, June 26 – 29, 2017
Course Code: MRIPTII-S171
Place: WTTI White Plains, 40 West Red Oak Lane, White Plains, NY
Fee: $520
Course Code: EXPO1-S171.1
Taught by Phyllis Bertin, M.S., co-author of Preventing Academic Failure (PAF), this course is an advanced level of PAF training and for teachers who have taken Multisensory Reading Instruction: PAF Part I. Topics include techniques for developing reading fluency and comprehension, for reading multisyllabic words and for transitioning from the Merrill Readers to grade level text. For teachers of grades K – 6
Time: 9:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Fee: $620 (manual included) In Manhattan: Monday – Wednesday, August 21 – 23, 2017 Time: 9:00 a.m. – 2:30 p.m. Place: WTTI Manhattan, 212 East 93rd Street, NYC Course Code: EXPO1-S171.2 Fee: $620 (manual included)
Spring 2017 The Beacon
17
er Courses, Workshops, anhattan
mer courses offered at WTTI’s Westchester and Manhattan campuses. Expectations to meet the new writing standards begin in the early grades and extend through high school. In this course, Betsy M. Duffy, M.S. Ed., Director of Language Arts and Instruction at The Windward School, will present strategies for teaching expository writing in all content areas in grades K-12. Instructional guidelines will be presented for developing complex sentences, outlining, writing paragraphs and compositions, and revising and editing. The course offers specific evidence-based techniques to add structure, coherence and clarity to students’ expository writing. This program, Teaching Basic Writing Skills (Hochman Method), can be implemented in general classrooms and special education settings. For teachers of grades K – 12 This course is offered twice in the summer. Both sections are offered for one graduate credit. There are additional hours, assignments and fees.
SOCIAL AND LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT The Impact of Mood and Anxiety on Attention and Learning: Diagnosis and Treatment Strategies Presenters: Alan B. Wachtel, M.D. and Anne Margolis, L.C.S.W. Date: Tuesday, May 9, 2017 Time: 4:00 – 6:00 p.m. Place: WTTI Manhattan, 212 East 93rd Street, NYC Workshop Code: MOODATT-P171
Language influences every aspect of the curriculum, affecting the way children learn and teachers teach. This four-day course, taught by Lydia H. Soifer, Ph.D., will focus on the role language plays in learning, including decoding and comprehension, vocabulary and concept knowledge, thinking and reasoning, narrative development, writing and social skills. Participants will learn techniques and strategies for enhancing language learning in the classroom. Group activities and mini-case studies will be used to reinforce essential concepts. For teachers of grades K – 8 *Previously titled Language, Learning and Literacy. This course is offered for one graduate credit. There are additional hours, assignments and fees.
MATH SKILLS Improving Math Competence: Diagnosis and Remediation Instructor: Eileen Perlman, M.S. Dates: Tuesday & Wednesday, August 15 & 16, 2017 Time: 9:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. Place: WTTI White Plains, 40 West Red Oak Lane, White Plains, NY Workshop Code: IMPMATH-S171
Fee: $110
Fee: $295
In this workshop, Alan B. Wachtel, M.D. and Anne Margolis, L.C.S.W., will explore the range of behavioral strategies and pharmacological approaches to attention and mood disorders. The risks and benefits of medication in children will be discussed. Strategies to improve executive functioning and mood-related symptoms will be presented using case examples. Recommendations for parents and teachers working with children impacted by these disorders will also be discussed.
In this workshop, Eileen Perlman, M.S., will discuss how language processing involving semantic and linguistic knowledge, visual and spatial organizational difficulties, and memory affect various math skills. The areas of number sense, counting, arithmetic and word problems will be addressed. Participants will learn error analysis to determine the specificity of the processing problem as well as specific research-based strategies in order to teach more precisely and remediate effectively. For teachers of grades 1 – 5
Classroom Language Dynamics: The Language of Learning and Literacy* Instructor: Lydia H. Soifer, Ph.D. Dates: Monday – Thursday, July 10 – 13, 2017 Time: 9:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
For registration information, visit thewindwardschool.org/wttiregister. WTTI now accepts credit card payment. Call (914) 949-6968 ext. 1221 for details.
Place: WTTI White Plains, 40 West Red Oak Lane, White Plains, NY Course Code: LL&L-S171 Fee: $550
Locations: WTTI White Plains
WTTI Manhattan
The Windward School
The
Beacon
The Windward School 40 West Red Oak Lane White Plains, NY 10604-3602 Return Service Requested If this issue is a duplicate or addressed incorrectly, please notify development@thewindwardschool.org.
NonProfit Organization US Postage PAID White Plains, NY Permit No. 16
The Windward School Newsletter for Educators and Parents Spring 2017
Dr. John J. Russell Head of School Jonathan Rosenshine Associate Head of School Board of Trustees 2016–17 Executive Board Thomas E. Flanagan President Michael R. Salzer 1st Vice President Timothy M. Jones 2nd Vice President Mark A. Ellman Treasurer Susan C. Salice Secretary Ellen Bowman Thomas J. Coleman Elizabeth A. Crain George Davison Nicholas Finn Alexander A. Gendzier Mark Goldberg Jeffrey Goldenberg Arthur A. Gosnell Mitchell J. Katz Gregory D. Kennedy Stacy Kuhn Raul Martinez Janice Meyer Denis J. O’Leary, III Maria Reed Eric Schwartz Lou Switzer Patricia L. Wolff Devon S. Fredericks, Trustee Emerita Editor Heather Pray Director of Publications Design John Greer Graphic Management Partners
Stay Connected with The Windward School: thewindwardschool.org facebook.com/TheWindwardSchool
instagram.com/TheWindwardSchool twitter.com/Windward_School