Better Teaching: Only Stuff That Works

Kyair Butts
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Gene Tavernetti: Welcome to Better Teaching, Only Stuff That Works, a podcast for teachers, instructional coaches, administrators, and anyone else who supports teachers in the classroom. This show is a proud member of the BE Podcast Network shows that help you go beyond education. Find all our shows@bepodcastnetwork.com. I Am Gene Tavernetti the host for this podcast. And my goal for this episode, like all episodes, is that you laugh at least once and that you leave with an actionable idea for better teaching. A quick reminder, no cliches, no buzzwords. Only stuff that works.

I'm joined today by Mr. Kyair Butts. Kyair, Is the 2019 Teacher of the Year for Baltimore City Public Schools, 2024 Extraordinary Educator from Curriculum and Associates, and 2023 to [00:01:00] 24 Goin Literacy Fellowship Awardee. He teaches literacy at Henderson Hopkins Partnership School and is a teacher leader in the district creating, facilitating, and leading district professional development centered on literacy and equity.

Kyair also mentors young or new to profession educators. He's been featured in various education blogs, Goyan, Great Minds, The 74, Curriculum Matters, and literacy podcasts, Melissa and Lori Love Literacy, Knowledge Matters. For his work, In urban literacy curriculum, especially science of reading and fluency, specifically his deep knowledge of wit and wisdom curriculum.

Kyair is in his 10th year with Baltimore City Schools and continues to find joy in the classroom and his community. His students are potent motivators to continue in this work by continuing to fulfill a passion driven purpose. Follow Kierra and his students on Twitter and on [00:02:00] Instagram, and those addresses will be in the show notes.

Good morning, it's great to have you on better teaching only stuff that works.

Kyair Butts: Thank you. Thanks for having me and good morning to you too.

Gene Tavernetti: Yeah, you know, I was so excited to have you on because I know that as the people learned in your introduction, you focus on middle school literacy and 1 of the things that just to set some context, if you could describe.

Your classes, their reading levels, maybe their self images as learners when you get them, kind of who you're working with. What's your raw material as they come in?

Kyair Butts: Yeah. You know, so one again, truly thanks for having me. I, and I love talking literacy. I love talking and reading and I love talking how we can make. It's love for reading this, the ubiquitous feeling, right, especially for middle schoolers. I teach seventh grade. So, before folks start sending me their thoughts and prayers I'd probably rather give you my Venmo or my cash app handle, [00:03:00] but I joke because it's such a formative time, right?

For kids. I've got kids who, you know, they're in seventh grade, right? So we're talking, you know, 13 on the cusp of 14, you know, maybe 12 into 13 years old and. Yeah. There are a number of them right who are reading well below grade level and we use an I ready diagnostic from curriculum associates. It's a progressive diagnostic.

So I always like to think it's kind of like the 3 little bears. It's trying to figure out what is the just right reading level for students. You know, we also use a net from achievement network. Which is a little more grade based standards aligned, so students are receiving grade level content. I give those two assessments just to, I kind of, you know, again, give some background information on my students.

You know, I teach at a Title I school in Baltimore. A majority, well over a majority of my students, in fact, all of them, would identify as black African American. And we, and again, to your point, Gene, like, I do have students, you know, reading, you know, four or more [00:04:00] levels below grade level. Now, when the students come to me at the beginning of the year, it's fascinating because some are saying, hey, Mr.

K. I heard that you're a super mean, you know, I heard that you're a mean teacher that were, you know, there's gonna be a lot of work to do in your class and it's a little funny because I'm thinking, Oh, my goodness, I'm probably the softest person on the team. I'm just a really big teddy bear, but I'm adamant about maintaining high expectations, excuse me, and what students can do.

And if we're not there, always emphasizing that we're not there yet. So again, kind of giving that pretext to that context to say Hey, I do have some students who are struggling. That's also okay. You know, we spend a lot of time also working on fluency, and I am a huge believer in fluency because on the one hand, some teachers, you know, in 6th, 7th, 8th grade or higher might say to themselves, well It's no longer my job to teach students how to read, [00:05:00] right?

I'm in a reading to learn grade, if folks still kind of use that phrase. I'm not in a learning to read grade. That should have been on the, you know, kindergarten, first, second, and third grade teachers to teach those foundational skills. And what I would say is that, you know, one, there's some moral abdication of the job, if that's what teachers are saying.

It's not my job to, you know, insert skill and I'm not a big fan of that. But I would say that fluency is a great way for me to help try to bridge that gap to comprehension. I know that's an oft used phrase in literacy, bridging the gap between foundational skills, but kind of Understanding Scarborough's Rope and how these literacy skills intertwine.

Fluency really does help bring students along who are now in 7th grade who do have some gaps in their foundational skills. So Gene, when you ask me, you know, what does my classroom look like? I have students in 7th grade clapping out words. You know, they are literally syllabicating words. In fact, I recently, shameless plug, posted [00:06:00] on Twitter or X, you know, and there's a little snippet.

From my classroom, and you can see even in this like very quick little 16 seconds, students are working in pairs and they are taking seriously reading a passage on the board. I bolded some multi syllabic words that were really just a review from our classroom. Module overview, right? Why are we doing the Power of Language from Witton Wisdom, Module 3?

And students are clapping out words. Political, right? And it's so fascinating to see them working together. What students were working together. And at no point, if you were to come into my classroom, would you see students kind of sitting back, thinking, Mr. K, clapping out a word? Are you freaking kidding me?

I'm 13 years old. This is beneath me

Gene Tavernetti: Okay. Two things I have to tell you, I'm sorry to interrupt. Number one,

Kyair Butts: no, please.

Gene Tavernetti: There's no such thing as a shameless plug here. And then the other thing that I, that a couple of things I want you to clarify, but. But you're kind of, you're kind [00:07:00] of getting into this because one of the things that when kids reach that level, I mean, you've got all sorts of social, emotional things going on.

So my question is, and you're talking about, you get them and they're clapping out, you know, the syllables. How do you get the kids to buy in that they're not only readers, but they're becoming literate after all of these years of proving that they're not?

Kyair Butts: Yeah, well, one of the things that I would say, and this is a huge point, right? Jean, because I think a lot of teachers are asking themselves care. What is it that you do to get this level of buy in, right? Like you were just saying that they're 13 years old and there's not a single soul in your class is thinking this is beneath me.

Why would I do that? And I think a lot of it is I just tap into their sense of pride, quite frankly, right? And I tell students, I, right, Kier, and I literally say my first name, I'm like, hey, Mr. K, Kier, he still follows along with a finger or pencil if he's at a professional development or a [00:08:00] training and someone's doing some reading aloud.

And I'm like, guys, I have two masters, like, I'm pretty well read, you know, and I really believe in the work from the student achievement partners, right? My good friends, Meredith and David Lieben, right? Like, they've done actual professional development at my school before you know, via Zoom, and it was great.

I've worked with David several different times on various projects, and I believe in the research and what he says. Students that follow along, it's such a low lift task, can really improve their fluency. And I'm somebody who likes to explain the sort of, the how. Right? Behind the what? What am I asking you to do?

Well, I'm asking you to follow along. But why? And then that makes the implementation or the how just a little bit easier. So part of it, Gene, is just telling students, quite frankly, the research. I'm very honest with my students about the research and the why it matters. But, because I've been teaching for a while, I also have friends of theirs who have had me before who are now in 8th grade or now in [00:09:00] 9th grade at a different school.

I've even had some siblings. So, one of my students we'll just call him M, I'll say, M, right, I'm so excited that you're investing in fluency as much as your sister did, because when I had her in sixth grade, she did the same thing, and she ended up growing to grade levels. I had her again in seventh grade, and we got her to grade level reading.

And little stories like that really push students to be like, wow, my sister did this, and like, They know that their sister or their sibling is a better reader now. Now, not entirely because of me, because I also like to make sure that I'm giving that student they're just doing their credit too, but it's amazing.

And I also sort of don't make it a choice to, to opt out, right? If we kind of go back to our classroom management days from way back when, right, in teacher school. No opt out is something I really believe in. Hey, we're all going to do this Echo Read because we're all going to become better readers. Better readers make for pretty darn good leaders in some cases.

But I think the idea that we all want to be literate, we all want to enjoy this world, [00:10:00] and we all want to communicate with folks and learn more, it's really important. So the buy in piece is huge. Tapping into that sense of pride, anecdotes over the years, and making sure that I can share the research with them.

1000%.

Gene Tavernetti: How long you got? Okay. So what are the things that, that I wanted to expand upon is your no opt out, because I've heard you on other podcasts or I've read things that you've done. And I think the no opt out is one of those. That is the opera.

That's how you operationalize high expectations. I mean, it's not, I expect you to do something, you know, that I know you can't do yet, you know, but it is actually, I'm asking you to do things that you can do now. And my expectation and respect for you is. You're going to do it now. We're going to get better every day.

And I think that's one of those words that is, it's one of those words [00:11:00] that everybody uses, but doesn't know what it looks like in the classroom.

Kyair Butts: Yeah, well, and again, I'm thinking about, and someone's going to be listening to this, and they're going to know, I want to say it's Alfie Cohen, I wouldn't be surprised if it was Carol Dweck, but I think it was Cohen, right? This idea of unconditional love and now we might be thinking, okay Well, how does what does this have to do with no opt out?

And I think that for me I approach the classroom recognizing that hey, we're not there yet and that's okay i'm not a perfect teacher. I'm really never going to be, but I'm going to always do my best to put you in positions to be successful, right? Like, I like to think of myself almost, if we can use a sports metaphor, like a coach.

I'm a big football fan. Coach's jobs are to prepare a game plan, teachers, that's our lesson plan, and to make sure that the offensive players, your students, can implement that game plan with a high level of execution, but not just a high level of execution. [00:12:00] Your players Students have to not only be heavily involved in the game plan itself, especially those leaders on the team, maybe the quarterback or a star defensive player, your players also have to have a high level of confidence with the game plan, and this is why, when it comes to something like no opt out, we are now unpeeling, as Shrek would say, right?

These onion layers of how you get a really good classroom. Well, part of it is having a really good game plan, lesson plan, part of it is believing in your players. Believe in your students, right? And then the Dweck or Cohen, I'm pretty sure it's Cohen, unconditional love is you approach your students with unconditional love.

I understand that at some point some teacher maybe didn't do the best that they could for you when it comes to reading, but I need you to understand that your brain works just fine. It does. Your brain needs a little bit of fine tuning. Your brain, much like my entire body, needs some working out, and I shouldn't be skipping [00:13:00] leg day, right?

But, when we engage in these cognitive activities, reading, syllabicating trying to do some deeper level of analysis, right? That's good for us, and it's okay that you don't know this word yet. That's why we're going to clap it out together so that we can start seeing how these words are formed and then blend them together, right?

You might not know the word cataclysmic or how to say it, but I do know that you know how to say the word cat, which is the first syllable. So I think we can kind of finesse our way through the rest of it. And once students or our players start feeling really confident with the game plan, The buy in's pretty easy, and then you see a really high level of execution.

We're going out there and executing a really good game most days of the week, and I'm really proud of that.

Gene Tavernetti: And just to tack on one more thing to your analogy as that teacher, you are doing your game plans, your lesson plans. Based on the strengths of those students to build on those, knowing that you have to, they have some [00:14:00] deficiencies or some places where you're going to need to work hard.

But but you always work that. Okay, great care. You are awesome. Okay. We're back to fluency where I wanted to go. Can you talk about because that's a, you know, it is again, it's another word that we use because it's so, so what does fluency look like? Okay. For you in the middle school, what does it look like?

How you remediate it? Or you work on the fluency? What are some of the things that you do? You mentioned the clapping things out but what else do you do for fluency?

Kyair Butts: So, one, one thing that I'm really proud of, and if I've stolen it from somebody I really apologize, but also, not really, because that's what everybody does in teaching, and that's what makes us all better teachers. But one thing that I will say that I have implemented, More so than a lot of other teachers that I've heard is literacy teachers use annotating.

Now, when I first came into education in 2012, the [00:15:00] school that I was working at, my very first school they had the Maryland State Department of Education coming in. It was a district wide initiative and we had a coach and they were helping us. Really improve the reading scores in Baltimore City, you know, at least from what I can recall.

And one of the women that we were working with, you know, she had us go through, you know, text to text connections, text to self, text to world, and we were really pushing this word. Metacognition. And kind of like you were saying, Gene, there's a lot of words that we say in education that folks don't know what they mean, but we say them because they're cool.

Well, metacognition was the word in 2012 and 13 in literacy, from what I can remember in my personal experience. The idea was, we get students thinking about their own thinking. I don't inherently disagree with that at all. In fact, what I've done, I would like to say that I've done now over the course of ten years in the classroom, honestly, primarily and only as a literacy or a reading or ELA teacher, whatever term we're using, is, how do we expand on [00:16:00] students thinking about their thinking from a comprehension standpoint, and what if we sort of retract and kind of go backwards a little bit?

And now, what if we layer in a whole other layer of annotation symbols? So, follow me here. Students read a passage, and they are now tracking their thinking, circling words that they don't understand. So, usually we'll, you know, we'll have students circle a word that they don't understand, maybe put a question mark, maybe star words that they think are important.

In Wit and Wisdom, during the Notice stage, or the Wonder stage, rather they do a lot of notice and wonder. So they might put an in or a question mark, whether they notice or wonder respectively. Okay, well, that's great. I love it. I still do it. But all of that is around comprehension. What do students understand?

The point though, Gene, is how do we get students to think about how can I read the what better? So then I've layered in this whole set of fluency [00:17:00] annotation symbols where. Would you maybe put a slash, or like a backslash, I guess, if it was a keystroke and they were doing this online to really emphasize pause?

Where would you underline a word because you're like, I should emphasize that word? Again, Shameless plug, but if you were to go to Twitter right now, at k y a i r b, at k e r b, you found the most recent tweet that I posted, not only do you see a little you know, 16 second clip of my kids, you know, clapping it out and syllabicating, you also then, there's a link to a student who reads fluently, and then she goes a step further.

She's explaining her fluency annotation symbols and how. They helped her read better, right? So when we're talking, Jean, about fluency and the buy in, students are now slowing down, marking up their paper, not necessarily to help them understand what they're reading better, but so that they can understand how [00:18:00] it should be said.

Noticing, is it dialogue? Is it narration? Was there a period versus a punctuation versus a comma versus an ellipsis, right? Was there an em dash or a hyphen of some sort? Or what verb should I be looking at? So we have a routine in my classroom where after students complete their table of contents to organize their notes, we go over our learning goals and our learning target for the day, we immediately jump into what I call a focus on fluency.

There's usually a sentence or two. The first step is to write that down. The second step, after they've written that sentence down in their reading journals, is to identify any important word. any important phrase or punctuation marks. Then they work with an elbow partner to identify what is the main idea or maybe the subject of that sentence or the main idea of that particular passage.

Lastly, they then have to annotate using fluency symbols. Where would you raise your voice for vocal inflection? Where might you change up the prosody, the pacing, given what it is that you're reading? So now students have to understand, oh, [00:19:00] Well, the passage that I read sounded like somebody was in distress.

So maybe I want to read with some urgency. Maybe I want to slow it down. Maybe I want to sound sad, like I was the person going through the hardship. And you can hear that when students are having these elbow partner conversations. Okay, well now that you know what you're reading, The fourth step is, how does knowing what you read affect how you read?

Gene Tavernetti: Okay, so you got my head spinning here, Chiara, lots of questions. So let's start with, um, the teacher's listening to this. And they say, Oh man I want to be like I'm going to be like you are. Okay. So I'm going to start doing this. What should the expectation be when they start?

What did you have to do? And he lay any groundwork for this, any instruction, how much instruction in this because so many times you hear a good idea, go to a conference, you hear something, Oh, that didn't work the way I thought it was because they didn't understand what the [00:20:00] progression needed to be.

Kyair Butts: Well, the first thing that I did, quite frankly, was I just took it back to basics with students, right? The cat walked. Okay, what happened in this sentence? And students tell me, okay, great, what's the subject of this sentence, right? And I just literally, it was, the cat walked. No.

Literally just one word. And so, what we do almost at this point in some Some folks, I say old heads and I say that very lovingly and I hope respectfully because I'd like to consider myself one too, is it's just sentence diagramming at that point, right? You can just take a very basic sentence, subject, verb, maybe if you want to throw in an adverb or two and a couple of adjectives just to kind of spice up the sentence because it could kind of change like what is being read, but if you just said, you know, unfortunately, right?

The sentence could be, My dog passed away. Okay, like, what is happening in this sentence? Talk to kids. Now, if you were saying that, how would you feel? Okay, so like, let's say it made me kind of [00:21:00] sad. So if there's any teacher that's listening to this out there, I would say the first step is just explain to your students what fluency is.

Fluency is something that helps us read a little more smoothly so that we can ultimately understand what it is that we read. Fluency definitely is a little like math in that we want to make sure that when we see a word, we recognize it automatically, right? So there's automaticity, we know automatically in less than a second, 1 plus 1 is 2.

And I do that with my 7th graders when I talk about fluency. Hey guys, what is 1 plus 1? Cool. How long did it take your brain? And most of them are like, I just know it. Well, same thing with word automaticity. When you see a word, how quickly does your brain recognize it? Right? Pacing. How fast or slow should we be reading?

Now, for anybody out there that's saying that, you know, fluency is, you know, read fast, what good is reading fast if you don't understand what you read? That would be my pushback. And then prosody. There is a component of comprehension to prosody because I don't really know too many people who would want to read in a [00:22:00] happy tone.

My dog died! And sound happy about that, you know, so I think that's where we get a little bit of comprehension as well. So the first step again, Gene, for those teachers out there is let's just explain what fluency is, what it is, and what it ain't, as I like to say. And I'm very transparent with my students about it.

There's an anchor chart in class with the three components of fluency. Cool. Now, let's start to layer in just one or two sentences at a time. Very basic. What's happening in this sentence? What's the subject of this sentence? How would you read this sentence? And then from there, I really just start scaffolding up.

One sentence becomes two. Two becomes now, instead of just no dialogue, I throw in some dialogue. Now it's some dialogue with maybe an internal monologue where I italicize it. And again, there's a lot of this already on X or Twitter that I've you know, posted. But you're right. You want it to be easy for teachers.

And, if anything else, here's something that's super low leverage that doesn't add a disproportionate amount of time for your students. If you're like, here, [00:23:00] that idea sounds great. I still need a little more time or practice. Okay, that's okay. Go back to your learning goals. How do you share with students what the learning is for the day?

My students, I'll call on one volunteer to read the learning goal out loud. Today we will, da. Then that student actually counts down from three and will choose to either lead the class in a choral read or tell the class, I'm gonna lead you all in an echo read. Two very easy fluency strategies choral reading and echo reading that a student can just lead.

And now that is part of your fluency routine every day. (Ad Section)

Gene Tavernetti: Well, you've got confidence. I'd hate to hear them read that learning goal in a sad voice. Okay, so, I heard you someplace talk about talking about a new curriculum that was scripted and you found it freeing. Do I remember that correctly? Do you remember? Do you

Kyair Butts: Boy, [00:24:00] well, I definitely remember this. This is a little funny. You've boy, this is when you know that you're with some experts because you've done your homework. Yes. So ultimately, you know, just to contextualize, right. Baltimore City, a majority of Baltimore City public schools, I shouldn't say that all of them, but the school that I'm at I guess I'll speak my singular truth, is that the school that I'm at uses a curriculum from great minds, it's their humanities or their lit curriculum called Wit and Wisdom, and it is a knowledge building curriculum, it's standards aligned, it's research backed and based, it's also written by teachers, you know, and what I would say is, that, It is a scripted curriculum insofar as, yeah, there are suggested questions to ask, there is a scope and sequence that is aligned for you in what's called the module map and where should you be going, you know, what is the assessment, but yeah, that's it.

It's an integrated approach to literacy, right? So your writing is embedded in the content [00:25:00] or the stuff, I guess, or the comprehension that your students are learning. The anchor text really drive the questions and the learning. In the module themes, and there are some amazing module text that students are reading.

Now, I would not fare well, if I'm being honest at a school that was direct instruction, DI. And I had to have my script in my hand and walk around up and down these rows, more proctor than teacher, reading from my script with very little flair. I know we're doing a podcast, so folks might not be able to see my face, but like, I look Nothing like Miss Frizzle, but I do embody her spirit quite well.

And I say all that to say that I just don't think that at whatever school Miss Frizzle was at in the animated show, that they were doing direct instruction. I just don't think that she would do well. And neither do I! I need to have some sense of, like, creative freedom if I know that this is what my students are capable of doing, and I can swap out an [00:26:00] instructional routine.

And to me, the beauty of Wit and Wisdom is that, one, I really like planning now. You know, the content, the module themes are incredible. I love starting the year off in seventh grade talking about identity. I love starting the year off not only talking about identity, but power structures, hierarchies, and how does society kind of enhance and limit our sense of identity.

One, really pressing it for right now in 2025, but more so than that, students are becoming the people who they just might be forever. And identity is such a huge role in who we are and how we show up and why we show up. And I love that in Witten Wisdom, that's what they do. Now, I've got some freedom within that, right, to kind of, you know, build a longer runway or an on ramp to learning, right, within Witt and Wisdom.

But when I follow the scope and sequence, you know, I can vary a question, I can change an instructional routine. But when I stick to the integrity of what the lesson is, it is freeing. And I think that the context, Gene, [00:27:00] right, that you're thinking of, you know, from an interview or maybe a blog that I wrote years ago, was this idea of, As a first year teacher, I taught 4th and 5th grade.

Baltimore City, at that time, had a separate vocabulary curriculum, a separate comprehension curriculum, a separate foundational reading skills curriculum, and a separate writing curriculum. So it was like writing, vocabulary, foundational skills comprehension. I think I repeated one of those, but basically four different parts.

I was a first year teacher, so my head was already spinning, right? Having four different things to prep, and then also two different grades. For things each to prep. I'm not good at math, but suffice it to say that was a lot for me as a first year teacher with a curriculum such as wit and wisdom. My lessons are sort of quote unquote done.

What I need to do now is internalize that lesson and think about how to present that material to students. But because the [00:28:00] material is also, to me, so engaging, talking about identity in the Middle Ages, making connections to past and present, right, we're in right now the throes of Module 3, talking about how powerful language is, reading Animal Farm, but then bringing in some examples from Baltimore City and, you know, famous Baltimoreans and slam poetry and this Black History Month, like, there's just so much to do.

That I feel I actually like planning and I know that's kind of like a weird thing for a teacher to say because I don't hear teachers ever saying I love planning, but I really do like planning and maybe the difference or the nuance and wit and wisdom is. I'm not planning the plans done for me now.

I get to internalize and I think what some coaches would say right if we go back to the football analogy, I think that some coaches would say, you know what the planning part, you know, could be kind of fun, but it's internalizing the game plan and thinking about the execution. That's also exciting and freeing as well.

How are my players going to respond to this if I [00:29:00] present it this way? So yes, a lot goes into the quote unquote game plan and the lesson plan. But as a coach, I really like thinking about how am I going to internalize this? Best for student execution.

Gene Tavernetti: my feelings about the, you know, the scripted programs, you know, exactly. The way you feel, you know, like, man, I want to put me in there. I would, you know, me in this lesson. And I write a couple of books about instruction and coaching. And guess what I do. I lay, you know, I put in the, I put in those I put in those pages say this, you know, you don't say this.

You could say it every time it works every time, but Again, it's getting you to that point that you talked about. So now I've internalized it. I understand why this works. I could tweak it a little bit. I could still accomplish what I want to accomplish. But I think you may. I think you made a good point.

Is that you know, and I don't know how we do this is, you know, to get the first year teachers [00:30:00] to realize you're not less than. You're not less than if you do this. These people spent a lot of time. It will work and guess what? You'll put a smile in there sometime when you want it or however you want to do it but I agree with you that you know it's just easier to start and if you're an assistant coach let's get back to football if you're an assistant if you're an assistant coach and you're teaching the You know, you're coaching the wide receivers and you know, the game plan guess what?

You're doing exactly what the head coach told you to do,

Kyair Butts: Yeah, well, you know, and, but that's the beauty of it, you know, and I think about, you know, the school that I'm at and the team that I've got, you know, I think about our social studies teacher world history, I guess is actually the content that he teaches, our math teacher and our science teacher, you know, while we're not, All teaching the same content.

Obviously, it's nice that we, at least again, at my school, we have a period called acceleration, right? So students are getting, you know, what they need. We're able to remediate, you know, some skills. [00:31:00] And what's great is that I can extend and do a little bit more fluency, so when I include my teammates on, hey, we're going to work on fluency, these are some things that I would like you to look for when we're, you know, when I pass out this sheet, you know, hands are going up.

We actually co teach, so what's fascinating on my team is we have this extra period at the end of the day. From about 3 to 3. 50, again, it's called acceleration. We have about 70 students in 7th grade split across, you know, 4 teachers. But at the end of the day, we actually all come together, all 70 students, all 4 teachers, and we co teach.

And a lot of times, there is a big focus on fluency, and I'm leading 70 students, but it's great to have my other co teachers, and like you said, right, my assistant coaches in this case, you know, understand the game plan. That way they know what fluency should look like and then, of course, because there's actually been a school wide push at my school for teachers to, you know, across content areas to push fluency, which great is then my teammates get to see me teaching [00:32:00] fluency, and they can also take that back to their classroom and use fluency in the math classroom, right?

Reading and understanding word problems, you know, circling words that they don't understand. And, of course, I hope we all know how important it is. Mhm. For science and social studies teachers to have just a little bit of knowledge for fluency because it's gonna help their students understand their content a lot better.

And that's also where students get exposed to a lot of Tier 2 and Tier 3 vocabulary.

Gene Tavernetti: Oh man, okay, so again, I'm spinning. So let's talk, let's go back to fluency a little bit, but I want to talk about it in the context of technology, because you mentioned they would annotate for fluency they would do this paper pencil, but if they were on a computer they would do this.

So how much technology do you use in your class for in this remedial class, remedial literature,

Kyair Butts: Yeah. Well, you know, what's fascinating is, so every student does this. It is a daily expectation for me, you know, as I'm doing my lesson plans the focus on fluency. It's there [00:33:00] all the time. Like, we're always doing something related to fluency, some passage. Recently I unfortunately cannot pronounce this guy's name, but my honors classes are working you know, with a quote that is a partial quote.

That begins, sometimes faint, is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction, but the sandstorm chases you. Over and over you play this out like some ominous stance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away. Something that has nothing to do with you.

And the quote goes on, and I really enjoy that quote. But I sort of recite that to say students continue to work with that quote. And what's fascinating is when they give each other feedback we do so much, they read to the wall, they whisper, read to themselves, they do the buddy reading, they read from the board.

We choral read as a class, a lot of strategies. But what's fascinating is more Morgan, a student I had last year said, Mr. K, I think the key to reading this fluently. [00:34:00] Is to pretend that you're the person going through a sandstorm. And I was like, Morgan, that is brilliant feedback for the class. Because this is an extended metaphor.

And it was great. And then I had, you know, I kind of was like, did a little warm call. I said, Morgan, I want you to share that with your classmates when we're done. And ever since then, it was fascinating to hear students go back and read that. Because they're like, wow. Okay, not a literal sandstorm. Got that from some of the context clues.

So, notice how many literacy strategies you're bringing in, right? How many skills are being worked on, figurative language, this extended metaphor. Pretend like you're the person going through it. Now, to your point about technology I was made aware of a website, probably at a conference, I'm sure, I'm unfortunately forgetting which But Vocaroo, V O C A R O dot com, Vocaroo dot com.

Very easy recording website. In fact, I actually just posted this to Google [00:35:00] Classroom the other day when Baltimore City had a snow day. And I had my students read a little passage, just a very short passage that I actually created. It was, Wait! Wait! Carson screamed at the taxi cab driver that clearly ignored him.

I hate Living in New York City, Carson thought to himself. So, I type that, and students go to Vocaroo and they read that. Now, part of the thing that they did, and again, if you go to Twitter or X, you can literally hear a student not only read that little, you know, snippet that I wrote myself, but like, again, you can hear her talk about her symbols.

Where did she pause? Why did she pause? And I like to make sure that students can also hear themselves read, you know, back in the day, I think it was PVC pipe or whatever, you know, and you got the like elbow PVC pipe. So kids could like almost hear themselves talk as they spoken to some plastic piping.

You know, now, of course, we have the, you know, Chromebooks and these really cool, fancy websites. I just have kids record [00:36:00] themselves there. It's just their voice. They'll read it, and then they send it to me on our school approved one stop shop app called Clever, right? So then, you know, it was so cool on Wednesday to just get a flurry of messages from students on Clever sending me their recording link, and I thought to myself, wow, like this is, it really Really just made my heart grow a couple more sizes.

It was just really cool to see students engaging with the fluency work on a snow day and sending me messages. Hey, Mr. K. How does this sound? Like they were giving each other feedback. You could hear, you know, family members in the back. It was just a really cool feeling.

Gene Tavernetti: Any other things you use it for you limit the technology in the classroom or

Kyair Butts: Yeah, you know, I am.

Gene Tavernetti: big Neil. This is a big deal. Now,

Kyair Butts: Yeah, it is. Well, you know, so Vocaroo I definitely use a lot of in the classroom. You know, it's fascinating. Yesterday was a PD day for us in Baltimore City. So one of the sessions I actually went to at my own school was about AI use. And I do know that [00:37:00] Curriculum Associates is actually in the throes of releasing a newer version of iReady.

I learned this at one of their conferences I went to for Extraordinary Educators last summer. And I'm excited that there's going to be a fluency component in the future. That's got a lot of A. I. Help and support to make fluency instruction easier for students in foundational reading instruction easier for teachers that can really give teachers some fantastic data.

Give some students really good feedback. So I'm excited to learn more about I ready pro and learn how to implement that in the classroom and do more fluency assessments assessing a whole class at the same time so that a teacher doesn't have to do. You know, I test gene that I test Sally. Then I test here, you know, yeah, That one at a time that takes a lot of instructional minutes away, but I believe what I remember from the I ready conference was that I ready pro one of the features would actually allow teachers to assess an entire class at the same time and get that data pretty immediately.

And then teachers get to [00:38:00] decide how do I use this feedback? You know, how do I use this data and how do I share it with students? So, I'm excited to continue learning more about technology implementation, especially as it relates to a I still think that a teacher's ear is going to be the best to give that fluency feedback for students.

But I think that. Again, iReady Pro or other systems out there that can assess students quickly but also get some meaningful data and the whole class at the same time, as opposed to, I need to devote five minutes to every student to read this passage, score it in an Excel spreadsheet. I'm hoping that those days are long gone because, you know, that does eat up at class time and instructional minutes.

Gene Tavernetti: ~let's switch gears again. ~Let's switch gears again. It's something~ that's again into something else ~that I heard you say that I would love to hear you expand on. And that is that we have veteran teachers experienced teachers in schools. And they're not being utilized. They want to be able to provide more support.

They want to be able to help folks at their school, but they're just not called on. I

Kyair Butts: Yeah. And, you [00:39:00] know, there's a wealth of knowledge that veteran teachers have, you know, mostly because there's a, you know, been there, done that. But, you and I were talking about this a little earlier is that veteran teachers and really, I would say all teachers, but because, you know, we're in a localized question to veteran teachers, they want to see their students do well.

In a lot of cases, you know, a veteran teacher, you know, could have taught that same student that the new teacher has. You know, if you have a veteran teacher who's been teaching, you know, fourth grade forever, and you have a new seventh grade teacher, well that fourth grade teacher knows that seventh grader, you know, de depending on the school context, but in, you know, my particular school, yeah.

If we've had somebody there for a while then they know that teacher. So I think one of the things is how do we get these, you know, teachers in the framework, how do we really help them? And veteran teachers could be coaches, they could be mentor teachers, content leads, right? And if you were to pair them strategically, Allow them to just sometimes just give [00:40:00] unsolicited advice.

I think another thing that I've been really wanting to push at the particular school that I'm at is just making sure that we have time for teachers to observe each other. Now a lot of, a lot goes into that. You know, do you have a school culture where teachers feel comfortable feeling observed? It's non threatening.

You know, and again, a lot goes into that. But if you have those systems or structures in place that culture settled, it's so valuable for folks to go see each other. I actually spend my planning period usually going to elementary. And trying to cue it up so that I can see an elementary teacher doing phonics or a foundational reading skill so that I can take that back to my 7th grade classroom, you know, so I always, I typically like to go to the elementary classrooms and it's important for veteran teachers, you know, to feel comfortable opening up their classrooms just to make sure that again, all kids deserve a really good teacher.

Gene Tavernetti: think you said something that I think [00:41:00] begs the question and that is we need to have a culture. In the schools that this happens. And I think I see a lot of things about maintaining a culture and, you know, making sure that the culture continues, but not a lot about developing that culture because I think it is developable.

If that's if that's a word that there are some specific things that we can do. And I think the big thing that we need to do, whether it's an administrator, whether it's a coach, whether it's. Whomever is that that there's a directive from the principal that says, you know what we're going to learn from you.

And the only way we can learn from you is to visit your classroom. so our instructional coach or AP, whoever it is just going to be visiting classrooms, not to evaluate you, not to just to see what's going on because everybody has something to share. And, but, and until you have developed that, that there's, it's comfortable for people to walk through your classroom.

[00:42:00] Then that other culture isn't going to exist because there's always an expectation that okay. Why are they here? Why are they here? 49ers

Kyair Butts: you know, hopefully we haven't used our football metaphor too much, but, you know, but I think that it even goes back to veteran players, you know, and I follow the NFL a lot you know, maybe too much so, but I would say, though, that you, at least for me, I hear a lot of talk about, oh, well, you know, it's the quarterback, right?

He's, you know, the first in, last out. And you've got other players on the team, you know, that veteran presence, you know, on the team. They lead by example. And I think that part of it's that, too. I think part of it is you develop that school culture by having veteran teachers say, No, please come see me. I'm doing this strategy.

I'm using this instructional routine. I want you to see my management. I want you to see how I build. Relationships in the classroom. So almost sort of like a football team. So goes the quarterback. So goes the team or these other [00:43:00] veteran leaders. I think schools can operate in a similar fashion where if you get some buy in from the veterans, now you have a player centered team, you know, and I think, you know, you see on a lot of these successful teams, you know, the Eagles, the Chiefs bills, you know, whatever it is, and there are some yeah, definitely the 49ers, you know, like there are definitely player centered teams where you hear that.

Yeah, they've got a great football coach in place. But I think, you know, if we are talking about like the 49ers, Brock Purdy is growing into that role. George Kittle is one of those guys. You've got Debo, right? You've got Fred Warner, like you just have playmakers or veteran teachers littered all over the building.

How do we let those veteran teachers really come to the fold and really take a step up? Because it shouldn't always be the head coach, aka the principal, with a top down directive, because at times that does feel a little micromanage y. But if you've got a veteran teacher saying, you know what, hey, I actually want you to come into my classroom.

You know, [00:44:00] I've got a new teacher on my team, you know, he's a first year teacher and you know, he with his coach have been able to come see me, I think the co teaching in the afternoon really helps, you know, and then always just kind of asking, Hey, is there anything that you need or anything you'd want to see what, you know, what in your teacher practice, you know, as of February might be struggling with and, you know, I think it also just means people being open minded.

A lot of that, you know, is I'll also just us understanding each other as people, you know, do we have enough time on task to understand who's in our building? What teachers do we have? What experiences have they gone through and didn't value those experiences?

Gene Tavernetti: Absolutely care. What did what a joy and I'll tell you I was a former football coach, so You can't use too many football metaphors so so so Advice to teachers something they should start doing something. They should stop doing

Kyair Butts: Yeah Well, I think if we're thinking about fluency stop putting too much emphasis on read fast Because then a student is gonna be thinking to themselves. Well one speed reading is [00:45:00] great, but then two Do I remember? Do they remember what they just read? So, let's stop over emphasizing pacing or how fast students are reading, Let's start implementing low level fluency routines, right? I think that you've got some low hanging fruit that tastes pretty good at the end of the year if you're interested in your student reading data. So, let's go for the low hanging fruit. Maybe just to start, you know, I'm not saying you need to implement fluency annotation symbols in your classroom or anything like that'd be awesome and super great, I'd love for more people to do that.

But let's just start with you, the teacher, leading an echo read of the learning goal that day. Maybe identifying a few important words in that learning goal to syllabicate and clap out. Let's also start with the mindset that the fluency strategy As it's written in the Common Core Standards, 1, if I'm [00:46:00] correct, shows up in 5th grade and does not show up again after that.

So fluency really is a 5th is an up through 5th grade standard, but 6th, 7th, 8th grade teachers and beyond. Just because it stops in 5th grade doesn't mean that you shouldn't still be emphasizing R, F, 5, whatever. Which is reading foundational skills 5th grade, then I forget the substandard. But you should still keep doing that.

Also, when I read the standard, here's what's also important to note for students, and I literally tell this to my kids. Let's say, Gene, you're reading something, you stumble over a word, and you go back and self correct. Here's what's great about the standard. You're allowed to go back and self correct and still be considered a fluent reader.

So I like to emphasize to my students, yeah, it's okay that maybe the Cup wasn't completely secured in the car, and a little bit of water spilled out when you went over the speed bump. There's still water in the cup. Which is to say, if you hit a speed bump word, an obstacle word, and you go back, and you suss your way through cataclysmic, because you know [00:47:00] that the first syllable is cat, as long as you can self correct and read it somewhat smoothly after that, You're still considered a fluent reader according to the standard, and the standard is excellence.

Gene Tavernetti: I think great advice. Great advice. I want to piggyback on one thing that you said. You have promoted several strategies that you would think would be, you know, you would see in 1st grade, 2nd grade, etc. And I think many teachers, when they get to the middle grades or even high school, they, oh, this is kid stuff.

The kids aren't going to respond. Guess what? We're gonna do choral reading. They respond. I watched an AP teacher. All her classroom management stuff was from kindergarten. And guess what? The students responded.

Kyair Butts: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I think that stickers can still be effective. You know, a good old fashioned high five or a fist bump can still be effective, but I think the other part That is important is telling a student, Jean, I care about you, I respect you. Here is why we're doing this. [00:48:00] Fluency is a great way for us to build our reading comprehension, to learn more vocabulary, and ultimately to become better readers.

Here's what the research says, right class? Okay, now that we understand what it says, let's just give it a try. I'm going to say the word, I want you to repeat the word, and then we're going to clap the word out together. Here we go. Cataclysmic. Okay, after me. Excellent. Now clap it out. And then, kids really like it.

And then, of course, in 7th grade, I kind of gamify it a little bit, but it's not even a game. It's more of a gimmick. Then I just go really fast through the words. So if I have 7 words bolded, I'll just start saying, Okay, here we go. I say it, you say it, clap it out. Greedy? Great. And then I just kind of see how fast we can say it.

And because they're kids, they think it's the funniest thing in the world. It costs me nothing, and I just start saying the words faster and then going out of order to trip them up. That's it. They think it's silly, we're having fun, and now there's buy in. Now the cool kid is clapping, and so is Mr. K, and we're all [00:49:00] having a fun time.

Just like gamifying anything, students are learning. I don't care how we do it, right? Any coach would tell ya, right? It doesn't matter if we win by a field goal, we score on his safety, or we blow him out. I just want the win, and for us, winning means that the hard work translates into heart work. Our kids are going to become better readers.

That's good for everybody.

Gene Tavernetti: Oh, let's leave it there with you care. That was great. Well, do you have a question for me?

Kyair Butts: You know, I think one of the big ones is, you know, so how do we kind of continue to use this platform, right? And it might have changed, but I want to know, how can we help more teachers, you know, with the mindset That understanding literacy takes everybody, right? Maybe some buying from the math teacher the science teacher.

What more can we be doing? Should we be doing? Yeah,

Gene Tavernetti: prior, you know, prior time in this conversation, and that is number one, knowing what everybody does [00:50:00] already, knowing you don't have to be a content expert. Again, this could be an administrator. This could be instructional coach, whatever the structure is within your classroom.

But if I know how, Here does something if I know how and then I go into a math class and I see how this math teacher does something and then I go into all these classrooms. It may be that what we ask them to do differently. It's just a little tweak. If they understood, let me give you an example. I was working at a middle school.

With the math teachers and one of the things that I had suggested to them is, you know, a simple turn and talk and that you go, Oh, it would take me forever to teach this to those guys. This was like over 50 percent second language learners. And so all of those strategies were all, the kids knew them, they wouldn't even, they, all they would need to say is, who's your partner?

Who's going first? Okay, here we go, turn to talk, but they didn't know that because they didn't know what [00:51:00] else was going on. So I think that's the first step, again, understanding what everybody does, because we all went to the. We're all we're not saying we're all going to the same conferences, but there are so many things that we're already doing in a similar fashion And if we're not either somebody's outstanding or they really suck because there's all you know You know because there's not that big much of a variability in what's going on.

So that would be that would be my that would be my suggestion. And it's just like you said about your kids, knowing your kids loving your kids. We don't have to love the staff, but you have to love them in the sense that I want to get to know how they are doing professionally.

Kyair Butts: absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And it's so funny. It's like, it's we the school that I'm at to your point, right. They said, you know what? We believe in fluency. How can we get more teachers to understand fluency? So one of the days they got [00:52:00] coverage for every teacher in the building and somebody designed a schedule so that I got to see all the social studies teachers at one time, and then their class was covered for 30 minutes, all the ELA teachers, you know, so on and so forth.

Everybody had coverage that day for their assigned 30 35 minutes, and they did a mini PD with me on fluency. First, the feedback was great. The teachers loved having 30 minutes that they could be covered to do PD during the day. Second, they loved being treated as professionals, you know, their time was respected and valued, their class was covered.

And that they had an opportunity to learn that, something that could make their classroom better. And what's great is, somebody who's on my team now, but wasn't on my team last year, said, You know, when this was a push last year, our school didn't do it so well. The school just said, Hey, do fluency, Mr. So and so.

This year, Mr. So and so was on my team, and he said, You know what, thanks to this PD I actually get it. I feel more comfortable. I feel more confident. I understand how I can do this now in my classroom and how it is low leverage. I just needed to see it. I just needed to sit down and not be told, Hey, Gene, do [00:53:00] fluency, but rather Gene, maybe we can implement one of these three strategies that Kira talked about today.

So I think that's really helpful. And even math teachers were saying the same thing. You never know what strategy is going to be good for your kids until you try it. And again, kind of like high school or middle school. Don't assume that your kids are going to think that clapping or syllabicating is beneath them or choral reading is beneath them.

I think that mindset really matters and a lot of folks are going to tell you that. If you think something is stupid, your disposition is going to come off as it's stupid and beneath you and your students are going to see right through that. But if you say, hey, this is part and parcel. This is what we do.

Hey, there's no alternative. This is what we do.

Gene Tavernetti: Yeah, this is what we do. And this is how you become successful.

Kyair Butts: That's right.

Gene Tavernetti: All right, Kiara, it has been an absolute pleasure. And it was great to finally meet you.

Kyair Butts: Thank you so much. I appreciate the time.

Gene Tavernetti: If you're enjoying these podcasts, tell a friend. Also, please leave a [00:54:00] 5 star rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. You can follow me on BlueSky at gTabernetti, on Twitter, x at gTabernetti, and you can learn more about me and the work I do at my website, BlueSky. Tesscg. com, that's T E S S C G dot com, where you will also find information about ordering my books, Teach Fast, Focus Adaptable Structure Teaching, and Maximizing the Impact of Coaching Cycles.

Talk to you soon