Episode 2: Why are so many students struggling with text-dependent writing?

Jonathan: Welcome to the Literacy Geeks Show. We are your hosts, Jonathan LeMaster and Lee Ramsey. The goal of our Literacy Geeks show is to inspire educators and spark great conversations that help students meet and exceed reading and writing standards. Join us as we geek out about our journey to revolutionize literacy instruction. Today we're going to geek out about why text-dependent writing tasks prove to be so challenging for students. It would be best if we talk about how we got here and a little bit about the history of our current literacy standards. So I think that's where we're gonna start, Lee, is talking about, where did all of this come from?

This conversation of text-dependent writing, where were we 20 years ago and where are we today? I think is a, is a good place for our, our

Lee: I think, yeah. Sounds great. We're hearing dependent writing. With some of the schools and situ districts throughout the nation who we work with, and, uh, just seemed like the good thing to talk about. Yeah. I love, yeah, we were just, uh, chatting about where the changes happened and the highlight on text-dependent writing.

Jonathan: Yeah. And you know, when I look back at some of the in education that has been around since I've been in education for 21 years and the closest one I can remember, I guess maybe the furthest back is No Child Left Behind. This is when President Bush had this idea and it was, it was a noble idea.

Very difficult to execute, but we're gonna have every child across the nation be proficient. At a certain date and time. there was no sliding scale. There was no, we'll have, you know, there was this percentage, right? There will be 20 by this time, 40% by this time, 60% by that. But there was like an actual end date to this, I, I think the, the spirit of it was that we were going to get all kids meeting standards, right.

I think at, at the heart of it, that's what, what was it was all about. I think is great and, and this is kind of the dawning of this shift to a college going culture, we believe that students should be able to go to college when they graduate high school, whether they want to or not. Whether they're gonna go into a trade or a craft is not really relevant.

It's all about you graduate. Do you have the classes? Do you have the skills to go into college? And you and I have talked about this quite a bit and in our first episode, we were talking about our trajectories and how different they were going out of high school. I was taking vocational prep courses, which means I didn't really have access to all the classes you were taking.

Jonathan: I was in wood shop and metal shop and I was learning how to fix broken computer machines. I was running dittos on that purple ink that you would, you could see my arm rolling. Um, roll these. Papers and they'd come out wet. And it was on this fir, it was kind of like the first kind of printing that you could do xeroxing. And I was learning that. And you were learning, you know, higher level math, and you were in taking extra social science classes and I was taking the bare minimum. And what had happened as a result of our two pathways, you went on to college I tried to follow you and I could not.

My counselor said, that's because you didn't take the prerequisite courses that you needed to get to be accepted into college. And I'm like, what do you mean? I graduated high school? And they said, yeah, that wasn't enough. And I think that that was kind of the I, I am, and then you are too.

Were product of that old thinking that you were either on a college prep track you are on some other track that's not gonna get you to college.

Lee: Yeah.

Jonathan: Yeah. What was your experience about that? Because you kind of didn't, I don't even know if you, well, we both didn't know this is I, know it's, yeah. It's been, uh, it's been been a fun conversation that we've had about it and, and thinking back, um, to high school, and I think, you know, you, you show up your, your freshman year and you sit down with the counselor and they kind of chat with you about your classes. I think I was excelling in math.

Lee: Math had come easy. Certain things were coming easy. You know, I was recommended, like I said in the last episode, to be in AP English. So I think they immediately thought that I was excelling in academics and that you're just going to be on the college track. And I'm like, okay. And both my parents had always been like, you're gonna college.

Yep, sounds good. And then here's your class. You're going to English, you're going to math, it was very structured, and there weren't too many options at that point. You know, you're just on the college track.

So, decisions were being made for you.

Jonathan: Right. And there were obviously decisions made for me. And so as education shifts to everyone's going to college, that presents a lot of new problems.

What are the, what are the kids expected to know and be able to do? Um, what sorts of skills will they need in order to be ready for college? What sorts of courses do they need? And of course, every state is different. Overall across the nation, there is this consensus that there is a finite amount of academic literacy skills that students need.

Many of them reflected in the common core when they came out in 2010, that students needed to be able to be proficient at in order to, to get in and succeed. Which is very, very important, right? Not just getting into college, but succeeding in college once you're there. So then in order to assess those, a new problem came up. Well, how do we know if a kid is college ready? Well, they've taken the courses well from one class to another. We know that there might be some differences and what the expectation is and what these, what the standards and, you know, what does it mean to pass a class, um, from one teacher to another?

And state assessments. Yeah. And what was taught exactly, you know, were there specific things taught, not taught? And so state assessments, uh, come out again and there's, there's this big pushback. I remember when Barack Obama, President Obama, um, uh, became president. There were a lot of questions for him. You know, are we gonna continue to test kids? Are we gonna continue to spend instructional minutes testing kids? I remember he came out with a policy that kinda limited schools. To a certain amount of hours of testing per year that you we're not gonna over, you know, over test our kids. But what's interesting about all of this is that there's this shift to, okay, if we're going to make the populace every single kid be ready for college, we have to have new standards.

And if we have new standards, we have to have new tests to see if our kids are meeting those standards.

Right? This is kind of where we are. Right In the middle of all of this is, is this, is this. Um, gigantic expectation that kids are gonna be able to write with sources. The standards are calling for it.

Jonathan: It's expected in the reading standards to read a certain way in order to prepare for writing. The writing standards are calling for an analytical lens to, um, approach texts. And then there's now a state assessment that has a, a, what's called a text-dependent.

The question, right? Or a text-dependent response, which requires text analysis. So here we are and we're talking about how, you know, how, how are kids prepared for this kind of assessment? What kinds of skills are they learning, right? Are they learning the skills that they need to be successful in doing this kind of task? It's a really big question mark. It's really interesting.

Lee: Yeah. And I, I know when we were prepping for this and talking about it, I think the, the number of skills, uh, you know, this is kind of a loaded skill in a way, right? There are so many things. They have to really understand what they read, and then they have to have all these new skills to be able to successfully write about a text, which is difficult.

This is a big undertaking in education.

Jonathan: Well, we didn't have to do anything like this. I don't remember. Right. I mean, I, we went through school. I don't think we had to, we wrote essays for sure, but I don't think our state exams at the time had anything to do with reading and writing a response to it. Right. I don't remember that.

Lee: Yeah, I don't remember it either. I remember in, in AP English, we were writing about a fiction text and were asked to perform character analysis and different things like that. So I, think this is different from a standpoint the texts are mostly nonfiction, right?

Jonathan: Well, what's interesting what you're saying though, too about AP and this gets into equity, is if not if, let's go back. AP tests, the exit out of a test is going to be very similar to a state exam today, where there's gonna be a multiple choice section, and then there's going to be a text-dependent question. In many of the AP tests, there are multiple text-dependent questions, AP language, and comp. I think three essays in it that require you to read a text and then write about it. But what I find interesting, and I wasn't even part of our plan, is this idea of equity. So the advantage of taking an AP not only bragging rights to your grandmother, but, if you pass the exam, then some colleges they will give you college credit

Lee: Mm-Hmm.

Jonathan: you don't have to pay for that.

That's free. That's a free class. And so if you're not learning skills to help you write about a text, then you're kind of at a disadvantage. And if you're not taking AP classes, which the, the, the ultimate way to pass, right, to get out of it is to take this exam at the end and score with a three or higher.

If you don't have those skills, then your peers. are advantaged. They, are taking courses and passing tests and not having to pay for college courses later on in their life. That's very interesting in that power struggle. When we talk about equity, we talk about making sure that all students have the same access. Uh, if our kids are not proficient at text-dependent writing, then they're not gonna do well on the AP exams, which then actually has some financial consequences. I think that's interesting.

Lee: Yeah. Yeah. I didn't, you know, is, it's kind of interesting to me what, what I thought about was the goal is actually different. So ap, freshman English and freshman English I, you know, I'd really never, I. Really thought, but you saying that it's really prepping towards, um, you know, passing a college level class your senior year at least.

That was the process I was going through. And, and it's interesting, I think you've mentioned it many times that the college writing is different. So the goal is different, right? The goal is to write about a text. And so, I can see how taking AP classes is a great advantage as there is a different goal, than the regular English classroom.

Maybe that's kind of, these standards are kind of helping facilitate and make sure there are changes at in, in the regular grade levels to make sure the goals are aligned. Right.

Jonathan: Yeah. Yeah. It is ironic that the courses that are not AP are called College Prep. Right?

College Preparatory. And there's only one that gets you college credit if you pass the exam. And that's AP. And why? Because College Board says that it is the most like a college class. So what's the college prep class then?

Lee: It should be right. It's.

Jonathan: It, really should be equivalent to an AP class if we're trying to prepare for a college exam or a a college course. Um, it needs to really mimic those skills. So let's talk about that. I think it's really important when we talk about text-dependent writing and we talk about text analysis. the reason why that's such an important skill set, and as you said, it unpacks many, many different skills, is because as soon as you get into college. The expectation is that you have to read something to write about it, and usually that something that you're reading is. 12, 18, or 35 pages in length, and that's in a textbook. That could be an article, it could be some sort of study that you're reading, and then on top of it, you have to synthesize multiple texts to do this.

Well, it's not just a matter of just, oh, looking at one and it's not your typical research paper. I think people get confused about that, where, you know, a text-dependent writing. The exam is more like a research paper. It's not, you're not shifting ideas, from one medium to another. I'd call that kind of research. What you're doing with text-dependent is you're thinking about the question and you're using sources to build ideas and to strengthen arguments, and so the level of thinking and the ownership and control over those sources is so different. Then just like a research paper where you're just kind of summarizing the facts, right?

You're just summarizing the facts. That's not what you do in a text-dependent. in college, you go from high school into college, and all of a sudden now you, you have to, you have to read these extremely difficult texts and write about them with high proficiency. is why text-dependent writing is, is so, so crucial.

Lee: Yeah.

Jonathan: Yeah, and I kind of mentioned a little bit about research, right? So what other, what other places we are? We, we kind of, like to, well geek out, um, about all the things that we do and where we find information and, and, and justify what we do. So when we talk about. Looking at sources, what are some, what are some ways that we, as literacy geeks look at sources for our own, for our own business, for our own decisions?

Like what do we do with sources in a real world, world setting? 'cause I think kids always wanna know, like, when am I ever gonna use this? Why would I want to do this?

Like, find some line into that process that we go through.

Lee: Yeah. You know, I think business, uh, a lot of times, uh, we're looking at what our competitors are doing. Right? And, and, and are they having success in. You kind of need to benchmark yourself against someone to understand, uh, where you're at. Uh, so it's a form of measurement. And so looking at your competitors and seeing, seeing what they're doing, uh, like one is looking at their products and, and how they compare to your products.

And so there's a fair amount of analysis done to see, uh, really understand, you know, how they've, how they've leveraged technology or how they've integrated their lessons. Into their technology and platforms to understand if we, you know, believe it fits, you know, our pedagogy and, and it fits, uh, you know, the transferability and things there, and then we can maybe think about integrating similar things into our product base.

Uh, so I think that's, it's how we do it quite a bit. I think the, the other thing is just, you know, maybe. Sharing literacy geeks with the world. Uh, so we want to get our name out there. Uh, we want, uh, people to know us. Uh, and so what are other, you know, competitors doing in that case? And so there's a lot of research and understanding, uh, about what they're doing and, and is it successful?

And a lot of it you don't know, you have to, um, there's, there's ways to, to guess, but, uh, it's not, uh, as. Perfect in nature, uh, you know, so, but it's, uh, yeah. So I think we're constantly doing that, um, in many ways. Right? Is right. right. And, and I think we're also testing out what our, how, you know, how our skills either align to what research is saying or we're using research to build, I. New skills we're

Jonathan: built using research to, um, understand, uh, what kids need, right? This is why we're having this conversation today,

is because we've done the research to understand what has happened in the field of education. We're responding to that, and then we're we're taking lots of different pieces of information to formulate this new idea.

Right that, that's that text dependency is where are we looking? What sorts of information are we gathering?

Jonathan: And then now let's produce something new. Um, and I think that's the challenge is what I was kind of getting at.

I maybe not even said it that clearly, but it's not a research paper you're writing because heart of it, you're producing a new idea.

Lee: Mm-Hmm.

Jonathan: And that's what you're saying too, is we're looking at what other companies are doing. We're looking at the approaches that they're taking. Also that, and all companies do this also, that we can come up with something better, stronger, different, um, something that's going to help kids grow. So we're, we're constantly looking at, and then when we wanna write a really good argument, like in an email, right? We go look at who is the authority in this conversation?

What does research say about?

I remember this is a good one. I was trying to make an argument for why I should be going to conferences and presenting at conferences and I had to go and make an argument for my principal.

I went out and read research and looked at articles and compiled them, made an argument about what, what does it take for a school leader to keep leading? What does it take for an individual to stay inspired in the space? I was kinda like, okay, I'm gonna do this, you know? And so I found all this different, uh, research and, and put it together in an argument and presented it and it was persuasive because it wasn't just me. Right. And that's another thing about all of this is it's not just me. You are, um, you know, thousands of pieces of other things and I am thousands of pieces of other things. And I think we get stronger and stronger as we incorporate other ideas, right?

I think that's

cool. Yeah, I, I think even the one word that comes to mind is, uh, application. Yeah. And, I, and I feel like we're, you know, we're making a difference in research, but research is just the beginning process. They just, you can't stop there, I think what we're all saying here is now you need to apply that for the next step.

Lee: And so we, when we apply, it's to take action inside of our business to promote a certain way or, you know, to, um. To use a social media platform or to, uh, build a product or add a feature to a product. So it's that application, uh, that I feel like is that step. And I know in math that was kind of one of the things as well, the big shift was, um, not just adding, but applying the addition.

So,

um, how, how do you use it? So.

Jonathan: Right. So something that you've said that you appreciate about me when I do workshops is that I always give teachers something they can take away tomorrow, and that's something that I've committed to as an educator and as a teacher of adult learners. When you come and see me, there's gonna be things that you can take away and I think our company oozes that.

I think there, there's you, you use learning moments and I love it. It's a phrase you use to describe when either educators or students aren't on our platforms and there's just that like moment of. I got a new piece of information, or, um, that was a really helpful tip that I just got, or this little nugget over here is gonna help me move forward.

Those learning moments are so powerful and I want to connect to in the show you talked about when we talk about text dependency or text-dependent prompts. It, it, it's kind of like a whole essay. It's like a whole, it's a whole big. of skills, right? So the takeaway today for me is gonna be that there are these prerequisite skills to even the common core. Core does a very good job moving away from content. gonna teach four poems, you're gonna teach five novels, and it starts talking about skills. Specific skills that can only be achieved if you teach nonfiction specifically, or only be achieved if you teach fiction specifically. So I really like that.

But if you look at the skills, if you really unpack them, there are these prerequisite skills that students need. to sometimes reach that initial skill. And I think the framers, if I can call 'em that of the common core, um, maybe realized it's just too much to, to, um, define all the prerequisite skills.

And they certainly aren't vertically aligned, meaning prerequisite skills do not show up earlier in the grade levels. They're just, um, more accessible. The standard is more accessible at a younger age, but it's, it's the same standard. It's the same kind of but there are these other skills that need to be taught.

There's these other I, um, moves that need to be made, for example, as a writer. And one of these things is like what I like to call rhetorical writing. Um, and it also, there's a branch of rhetorical reading, so the rhetorical reading. writing, and when we talk, when we put the word rhetorical in front of reading and writing, what that really means in its simplest form is looking at the decisions that writers make, looking at the decisions.

So while I'm reading, I. I'm looking at the decisions that writers are making as they shift from one idea to another, as they use transitional language, as they use meta language to explain what's happening. So then I can transfer that to my own writing, right? Then I start using rhetorical writing skills and strategies so I can start doing those same things that's not talked about at all in the common core. It's like that's not even, you know, they might use the word rhetorical here and there, but it's really not a, a, a skill to say, let's take a real close look at how writers maybe shift from one idea to another.

Right. And so, the thing that we're gonna do as part of this show for this episode. Is that we're gonna post, uh, several prerequisite skills that we've identified so that our, our listeners and viewers can get to that and our Geek Gazette and that's our newsletter or our blog. So you could go to our Geek Gazette and get some of these prerequisite skills for the Common Core, which is really cool.

Lee: I love that. I know one of the things we talked about from a reading standpoint is that a really good reader is asking lots of questions, and I love some of the questions that you were talking about and I don't think those are, you know, maybe that's a shift. Um, when you're, when you're writing text independently about a text-dependent prompt, uh, there's different questions you need to be asking yourself.

And, and I, yeah, I I, it makes a lot of sense that Yeah. And, you want those questions to be active in your brain while you're, while you're reading it, to understand what that writer's trying to do.

Jonathan: And sometimes to keep you awake, some of the books that you read. Uh, when I taught AP English, there was one text about, um, the Mississippi River. And, you know, what you feel about the Mississippi River is completely, you know, not, not, uh, important to the conversation necessarily, the, the, the writing of it was so beautiful if you, if you really asked questions about it, if you stayed curious. But if you just read it for what it was, it was awful. Right? It was awful because it was just a description of how the river moved and you're like, you know, this is not something that I would pick up ordinarily. This

isn't something I'm checking out, you know, on Spotify to listen to on my drive home. This is, this is something that you just have to really slog through. if you're staying curious, and I'm so glad you brought that up, asking questions of the text and of the author.

Lee: mm-Hmm.

Jonathan: Why did you do this? What, what is gonna come next? And why is that coming next? Why is it now and not before? And what are you trying to do here?

And what is that word doing for you there? Like really digging into it keeps you engaged, right? So it's a strategy to keep you engaged. Um, and, and I think it's just interesting those, the, the questions that you ask, right? I think is a

cool comment.

Lee: Yeah. Yeah.

Jonathan: All right, so the next section is this idea of measurement.

If we are talking about Common Core, and we talked about the state assessments, now we are moving into this place where there are statewide tests. The statewide test has a text-dependent question, and more and more states are onboarding, uh, testing organizations that have this text-dependent. Question where students will have to read a source or two or three and they will need to respond in writing using those sources. Right. So that's, that's kinda where we, where we are. And I wanna know because you are excellent. Lee at data, you're excellent at, getting the right data, asking the right questions, and displaying the right information. So I'm gonna ask you a general question and just let you kind of go wild on this. But what makes good data then? And I'm, I want you to get into all of it, like what does it do for us, the frequency, how does it look? What, should we avoid? If we should avoid something? Uh, and is a single-state test once a year enough for us to move the needle with writing?

Lee: You know, kind of interesting, uh, what, what makes good data is almost, um, the same thing we're talking about with a good reader who is actively asking questions. So when you are going through reports. Your brain is actively asking questions about the data, um, if it's actionable.

And so I think the goal of data is actionable. It, it's, it's kind of like the goal of our, uh, reading and writing program is transferability, right? We wanna make sure students' skills can be used. Uh, moving forward. And so I think data, there's no reason to have data if it's not actionable. It's, was it pretty, it's got a nice little pie graph.

Um, it's, it's, you know, it's got a nice line graph. Ooh, you know? Right. That's, it's, it's, but really what we're looking for is something actionable and a, a lot of times. Um, even the first, first round of getting data, so we, you know, we have a clear goal, we want all kids to be able to do text-dependent writing.

Uh, so. We, we do the test, the state end of year test, and we get numbers from 'em, and we look at that and we're, okay, how are we doing? You know, eight 80%, 60% proficiency. Uh, so at least we know we have a certain level of students. But if we just had, you know, my, my district 60% proficiency

in text-dependent writing, my, my brain.

Doesn't have any, doesn't know where to go with that. I don't, I don't think. I think it's a good data point and then we can measure it each year. Right. But I, I don't know if it's actionable yet.

And usually, you just have to go down a level and, and once you go down enough levels, uh, of detail, it becomes crystal clear what to do.

And, and, and you, all of a sudden that flood of questions or flood of ideas on how to take action comes to you. It just hits you. It's really simple. And, so if you're questioning, I don't know what to do with the data. They, really just haven't gone deep enough yet. And, and so when, when we think about it, the next step is to understand like how we opened with.

Wow, this, this one task has a lot of individual skills. And so if we're really gonna break down what's going on, we have to take it to the next level. So one of the ideas, uh, was, was introducing sources. So how do you introduce them? So, how good are the kids introducing sources now? Now that's bite-size enough if, if you're at four, outta 10, or you know, 30% of your students know how to do that.

And that's the weakest skill on the list. Then I, I think a teacher's gonna look at that and go, okay, I, I have to teach my kids how to introduce sources, and if they all know how to do that, they're gonna be a little bit better at text-dependent writing. And so I, I think it's kind of getting down to that next level.

And so, and, really if that data is summed up well, all the way up to the district level, then, a, a district leader, a curriculum leader can say the, writing curriculum that my teachers are using to teach text-dependent writing is nailing it. You know, I'm seeing consistent growth. I can see where the skills, fill the gaps in and in our skill curriculums, you know, are curriculum's great or is it not?

Are we, we actually not spending any time on these certain skills and over the last three years, these skills aren't, aren't moving then, then we know, all right, we need, we really need to match the curriculum that we have to understand why we have these gaps and maybe we fill it in, or, or think about ways to, uh, to really get more of these lessons in, to make sure that these students, you know, move up.

Jonathan: And so when you have good data, you can pinpoint like, Hey. comprehending, right?

Because they're clearly pulling ideas over at the right time, or everything seems to be fluid and, and comprehensive, or at least, um, understandable. But like they're not using the sources, effectively, they're not. Making arguments or they're not using sources as ways to build ideas. They're just kind of transferring sources. What a, what a great, I think example of how you can check for something like that, but a skill that we're just like, oh yeah, this is what you need to do. Um, but to the kids know that and, and, to be fair, do all teachers feel comfortable with that? So does everyone feel? They have the curriculum. You talked about that. A curriculum director makes decisions about the curriculum. Do we, do we have the curriculum? I used to be frustrated often by textbook companies. They would give us the most cursory writing curriculum could ever imagine. Uh, don't, what do you teach with what they've given us?

You, you, it's like so generic. And not specific to any kind of mastery writing level at all. It's just kind of like, this is so basic. almost insulting how basic it is. And it's not what the kids need, you know? It's, it, it's so much deeper and you know, kids are gonna, kids are gonna learn whatever you teach them. So here's another takeaway.

You can teach 'em easy vocabulary or you can teach them complex vocabulary. You can teach them how writers think, or you can teach them how to write a five-paragraph essay. They're going to learn whatever you teach them. That's the takeaway.

They're going to learn whatever you teach them so you can teach them how to be rhetorically flexible. write to the situation and the context and, and write with voice and have a, a context of your own from what you're writing. Or you can kind of fill out more formulaic writing. They will do whatever you teach them to do. And I think that that's fascinating because if the instructional materials are that formulaic, then you're gonna get more formulaic, which may not transfer very well in a text-dependent writing because you can't be formulaic with these.

Lee: Yeah.

Jonathan - Techie Segment: All right, so we're gonna try this segment. Um, I'm, we're calling it, let's get techie, and we're gonna try this out. I'm gonna kinda wind Lee up. He's our tech oz, and we're gonna, um, see, see, see how this goes.

But, we're just geeking out about tech. People wanna know about it and understand it. And so, uh, I'm gonna ask a question, but we're gonna get into our let's get techie segments, all right, so why ask students to write on platforms other than Google? There's a lot of pushback, right? Because most, almost all writing happens on Google these days in classes. What are some good reasons why we should write sometimes, not all the time, not replacing Google at all, but why are, what are some good reasons to, to write on alternative platforms other than Google or Word? When we're talking about writing skills and writing instruction. All right, wind up. Go.

Lee: I think Google Docs and Word, uh, Microsoft Word were created to help get writing out the door. Uh, but they were not created to help, uh, students learn how to write well. And so if you try and modify something that wasn't originally designed for your goal, sometimes there are struggles and so we, we've seen some companies back to our research.

Uh, we've, we've seen some product implementations that are add-ons, uh, to a Google platform or, um, or Microsoft Word, uh, that, that start to be similar to, uh, spelling and grammar checks and, and giving feedback. Uh, and, and if you look at that, the, like, I know the spell check is a beautiful thing and has, has a great place, but it is a horrible teacher on how to spell well.

Uh, so I have spelled the same word incorrectly for the last 10 years. I think it's the I before E and not after C.

Jonathan: There's a rule.

There's a rule.

Lee: There's a rule, and I say it and I think going through this process in the last few years, I've tried to spell it correctly before I use the tool as a way to start to learn how to spell well.

Uh, but, in reality, if you just use that tool, you aren't learning. And so I think that's once you change that goal. So our goal. Is to help students with their reading and writing skills. And so we, we, we look at, can Google Docs help with that? Um, definitely from a transferability standpoint, this is the type of tool that, a student who goes to college will be using, goes into work, will be using, so they're used to that, that tool.

I, I think that's great, but infusing, enforcing, learning through the process, uh, there are some downsides and, and it is, is more difficult to do. And so I think that's, that is where we lean to wanting to take over the experience that a student goes through or a teacher goes through and, and, and have them.

Have some learning moments in between or we, we let them say that they didn't do something quite right, uh, to turn the brain on. Then we give them learning moments. Uh, and, and so we, when we control that experience, we can, we can get, uh, much closer to that goal of teaching a kid. A certain skill. And so that's the, that I guess maybe that's interesting.

You know, it's like we put on our Google goggles, you know, our goggles and we're, we're looking at it and we're like, how, how do we see technology? Or how, how does Lee Ramsey see technology? And it's, it's based on the goal. I think they're all, it's just a giant toolkit. Each technology that comes out is beautiful.

It's like a hammer. You don't always use a hammer to fix everything, you know, or a screwdriver to fix everything. Everything has its purpose that it was built for. And so I think looking at each technology and how to apply it, you know that, oh, that works great if we're trying to solve for in this situation that doesn't work so great if we're trying to do this other solution.

So. Yeah. I don't know if that

Jonathan: Hey, I'm like.

This is amazing. I think everyone else is like, yes.

A couple of things that you said, it's the goal and how you use it, right? What is the intent? What is the intended outcome?

You can't get Google Docs to teach your kids things specifically, so that's not gonna work. What, what? Will teach your students how to write better. But getting writing out the door, it's fantastic. It's, it's, um, very flexible. It's adaptive. It, it allows you to edit and move things around very fluidly. And then, I loved your analogy. The best analogy, you don't fix everything with a hammer, right?

And so when they're, when your students are struggling with writing, you don't just stick 'em on a Google Doc and hope that they're gonna get better at writing 'cause they're not. They're, they're just not, there's no nothing really in here. And of course you can do add-ons and other things. Um, plugins add-ons. But the problem is, is that without a central place, we're struggling to collect very, very important information about where they're struggling, right? These add-ons and plugins typically don't have a database that you can pull from and combine that data.

Disaggregate it form groups do certain things, you know, it just depends on what you're trying to do. And I, I,

Hey, that was brilliant. I think that was, that was awesome.

Lee: I think it's kind of fun. It moves us into our next conversation of, how are we applying the technology here at Literacy Geeks? I think there's been some recent amazing breakthroughs and one of the number one things was  OpenAI and language learning models.

And the word language is the key to it, and it is a huge software upgrade for writing. And, this tool also does a beautiful job of explaining why someone's writing did a great job or where it could improve a little bit. And that tool is an amazing upgrade. 

The biggest problem here is it takes too long for a teacher to grade a paper.

To grade and to get timely feedback where the brain is still on ideally when the student just finished this writing. And I think the quicker you give that feedback back to that student, the more engaged they're gonna be about the learning process. This is now possible and we're blown away by this new technology and how it helps education.

Apply it to our experience and our writing platform. This is a game changer. I think this is the direction we're gonna see in education move in.

Jonathan: Yeah, with our common writing assessments, one of the products that we've developed, we now have a state assessment, the text-dependent question, and you don't have to wait from one year to the next to get results. And even with the interims that, um, some of these assessments offer, which are those kind of mid-year assessments. don't do the grading for you.

They will only do the multiple choice.

They will not do the grading of the essay. So at the end of the year test, they do have human beings sitting down and grading your students' writing. But if you do a mid-year assessment, even on their platform and it happens to be writing, they will not grade that for you.

And it makes sense. The cost is too much. The manpower is too much and it's too much work. To grade all these essays. So we created common writing assessments because we know that students need that, that practice, that emulates that assessment. And they need that immediate feedback that you're talking about, Lee. They need those, those repetitions of how to engage in a text in the right ways and write about them thoughtfully, write about these sources thoughtfully using them effectively. Now you can do it. Now you can do it with language models. You're able to allow students to have these experiences multiple times a year. And what I think is the best is a, is in our industry is called a baseline. So if you can give a baseline assessment district wide at the beginning of the year in September, you can make some really great decisions about your writing instruction and, and how you go about writing. Throughout the year instead of, and I'll just be transparent, I've done it my whole career and I've been a teacher leader and been in meetings and teachers kind of start with their writing program from the beginning every year the same way.

Yes. Do we get better, and stronger, we sharpen, our craft at teaching it, of course, but we start blind. We don't know where our students are and those state exams don't give us enough data. Tying back, Lee, to what you were talking about, they don't give us enough information. And you know what?

It was taken two months before the end of the year, and then there was summer, I don't know, six months down the road where my kid is anyway, I need new assessment data so that I can make better decisions about when we're writing and our common writing assessment does exactly that and just, it's so exciting to be able to offer something like this and take the burden off of a district's shoulders or a school shoulders who are really excited about this, getting data across the board for all their kids without having to create a committee and have that committee trained and have everyone come together. Like it's just an, it's an, it's an incredible amount of work to pull something

off like this.

Lee: Yeah, the resources, the time and money is, is just so high that it's, you can see why you don't go down that path very often. It's a difficult path to go down, especially with the limited resources that schools and districts have, and they keep getting asked to do more and more. So, you know, I, I think we're excited that this, you know, anytime we find a new tool in the toolbox that helps, you know, streamline something that, you know, a teacher doesn't have to do.

Uh, or provides better data to a district so they can make better decisions. I mean, it's just amazing. And, and this is, this is revolutionary game-changing technology, uh, that, that we are blown away with. We're just blown away with the results that we've seen come out of it and how good it is and how personal you can make it.

Uh, the feedback is, is, is just cool. So. It's even, uh, you know, our first product, uh, was the common writing assessments, and we started to get feedback that we, we want our students to practice more, more, more than just that two, three times a year and doing the common writing assessments. And

Jonathan: That's true.

Lee: All of a sudden we're working on, uh, more learning moments more and, and, and being able to easily add more writing assessments maybe a few times a month. Into any classroom.

Jonathan: Yep.

Lee: So maybe you can talk a little bit about some of, some of the, uh, the, the writing assignments that, that you're seeing, uh, that would be so successful in the classroom today.

Jonathan: Right. And you know, and what you're saying is, you know, we have to just pause and think about that. You can have students write in science and get feedback on that. You can have students writing in social science and history and get feedback on that. You can have DB Qs done document-based questions, which is a type of text-dependent. can do that work and you can have kids take writing and I, and I think sometimes you know, students get a little tired of writing because they're part of the system, the lagging system of feedback. That feedback loop is so inconsistent. They kind of just are not motivated to even write I think a lot of times we think about the lack of motivation in students in writing tied to maybe they're just not interested, but maybe the issue is not that they're not interested.

Maybe the issue is that they don't feel a part of the process, that they're not learning while they're writing. Then they're not getting any feedback in a timely manner to help them improve. So as any human would question, what's the point? What's the point of this? If it's not going to be to my benefit, why do I wanna do this? It's an interesting point. think we can leave you with that. Um, we're, we liked this conversation. We're thinking about turning this into a couple of topics as we dive deeper into text-dependent writing. it's going to, this is something our whole nation is, um, working with and trying to find solutions to help students become, um, strong writers as they use sources in their writing. So we're gonna, I think we're gonna be adding more of these topics as we go in our upcoming episodes. And, um, I think, if I'm not mistaken, our next topic is gonna be about integrating sources, which in the beginning might seem like. Well, where's, you know, that's it. That, just that little bit and there's a lot to unpack and I think you'll be very impressed with what we talk about when it comes to integrating sources and how to help kids really start introducing those sources, using them correctly, uh, using them strategically. I think it's gonna be a great conversation.

We're just so happy you joined us. So thank you. Thank you so much.

Lee: Thank you for geeking out with us.

Jonathan: Yep. Take care guys. Bye.​