S8 E 3 Affirming Practices
Get a sneak peek into our bonus educator episodes! Shannon and Mary talk with Dr. Jasmine Rogers about structured literacy, affirming Black English, and supporting multilingual students of color through inclusive, research-based reading instruction.
Episode 8.3 Affirming Practices with Dr. Jasmine Rogers
0:00 Welcome to the Reading Teacher Lounge
01:09 Introducing Dr. Jasmine Rogers
02:37 Understanding Black Language in Education
04:34 Research on Affirming Student Language
07:32 The Importance of Cultural Awareness in Teaching
13:55 Personal Experiences and Reflections
15:48 Journey into Structured Literacy
17:37 Merging Identity with Teaching Practices
22:14 Reflecting on Teaching Practices
23:03 The Power of Translanguaging
24:57 Effective Communication Techniques
26:55 Building Positive Classroom Environments
30:04 Supporting Teachers and Students
31:29 The Importance of Authenticity in Teaching
32:59 Insights from Research
36:12 Morphology and Language Learning
39:50 Final Thoughts and Farewells
Transcript:
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8.3 Affirming Practices with Dr. Jasmine Rogers -
Shannon Betts: [00:00:00] Hey Mary, another episode of the Reading Teacher Lounge is here.
Mary Saghafi: This season, Shannon and I are diving into new topics and insights about best practices, sharing more teacher tested strategies, and bringing you engaging conversations with fresh and possibly returning guests.
Shannon Betts: Whether you, you're a teacher, tutor, or parent.
You'll find practical ideas and real talk to support the readers in your life
Mary Saghafi: because teaching reading is tough, but you don't have to figure it out alone.
Shannon Betts: Join the conversation and level up your teaching with us every episode in the Reading Teacher's Lounge.
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Mary Saghafi: Hello. Welcome to the Reading Teachers Lounge, real Life Reading Teachers Lounge edition. Because we have a reading teacher with us today, we are really excited to welcome Dr. Jasmine Rogers. She is chatting to us for these specific bonus episodes that we're talking about or that we're sharing.
Talking with teachers who are in the classroom or in the world of reading as well. And we have a great topic today. So Dr. Jasmine Rogers welcome. Will you just share a little bit about who you are and where you fit into the world of literacy?
Dr. Jasmine Rogers: Thank you so much for having me. My name is Dr. Jasmine Rogers and I am so blessed that I have dual roles within the reading world.
So not only do I get to be in classrooms every single day supporting [00:02:00] teachers with best practices and structured literacy instruction. I get to teach teachers at night at American University in a reading remediation diagnosis course. Where I am working as hard as I possibly can to build background knowledge for teachers for when they get into the classroom.
I am excited to be here and so grateful to just have an opportunity to talk more about the research that I've been doing on black language structured literacy instruction and really what we can do to support our fellow teachers.
Mary Saghafi: I love this topic that we're gonna dive into today's. Shared with us a topic that you wanted to chat about.
We were so eager because you want to chat with us about multilingual students and, and structured literacy, but really multilingual students with within the black community and how language within the black community may be different than what is happening at. School. And so I'm so eager to just sort of hear how did you come upon this [00:03:00] topic?
How, you know, tell us, tell us this path that you, that kind of led you this way.
Dr. Jasmine Rogers: So for those of you who are listening and not able to watch, I am a black woman. And during my time in the classroom I, when, when I was a reading specialist, I was also in graduate school and I was teaching a student the short a phon name, and we were working on a decodable text, and I noticed that the student read the word cap.
And so the student says, you know, Mac has a. Cap. Mac has a cap. He's like, that doesn't make sense. You can't have cap. And I'm like, what are you talking about? I'm like, oh shoot. He's talking about the black English or African American English word cap, which means to exaggerate, right? So it's like, okay, that makes sense how he got the meet that I'm gonna continue on another student.
We do the same decodable text, she reads it, she's smooth, is everything. Finishes. And then I'm like, okay, what happened in the decodable? She says, well, it's about a cat and a mouse. And you know, the cat [00:04:00] lied, but it's okay because they became friends at the end. And I'm just like, so this is twice in one day.
And I as a black woman, should be very well prepared for this because this is a language that is spoken in my community all the time. And the school that I was at, I mean, we talk about language of the school, the language of my school is black English. So like, hmm, I should have prepared better as a teacher and been ready for this.
If I as a person who's a member of this community who understands this was ill prepared, what does that mean for people who are outside of the community? And for people who don't often interact with black children only, you know, at their workplace. So here I go diving into research. I looked at try to find the, you know, where is the research about African American English and structured literacy, and I found a lot of stuff that was, addressing that there could be potential reading challenges, but there was no actual, well, here's a study that shows that, or here is how teachers are reacting to students. Or, you know, something to draw an actual correlation. So I went ahead to [00:05:00] a public charter school in DC and monitored their their pro their tutoring program.
And I watched how tutors reacted to students' use of black language within their structured literacy lessons. And so that was pretty fascinating because what I noticed is there was this, the, there were a lot of teachers who were doing very affirming behavior, which was beautiful to see because honestly I went in kind of concerned with how they would react.
But then when I saw teachers who weren't using affirming behavior maybe they were you know, questioning the student as to what they said or telling them that they were incorrect. I was, I, I noticed that behavior and I was able to do an intervention to talk to teachers about responses that would actually lead to better outcomes.
Because one of the things that we do know, if a student feels loved and if they feel invited in a classroom, they're going to do their best. And I want students to be able to do their best and be able to read. And they're not gonna do that if they're feeling shut down or if they're told that the way they're speaking is wrong.
So [00:06:00] that's how I got there. You know, me being a reading specialist, realizing. This happens a lot. And then when I reflected on my teaching career, I'm like, Hmm, this happened a lot during my career. We have to figure out a better way to support teachers who are less familiar with black language, how to support students in the classroom.
Shannon Betts: I have a lot of follow-up questions about like your whole. Research and mission, but I wanna just ask one clarifying question because we have a lot of listeners who are global listeners from like other countries in continents than we are here in North America, in the United States. So what do you mean exactly by affirming behavior?
And maybe could you give an example of that one? Like with the Cap Dec Dakota Decodable text.
Dr. Jasmine Rogers: Yeah. So I can even back up further to say that there are over 160 Englishes that are spoken. Worldwide. So that means there are over 160 ways that you can speak English correctly. So I'm a person who believes that.
I had a graduate student the other night say that she says the word idea as [00:07:00] idea. And I'm just like, that's perfect. That actually attracts with geographically with where you're from. And there's nothing wrong with you. You don't have a speech language issue, you're just from where you're from. Right.
So with that, there are 160 ways. Plus to, to pronounce words one of those ways that is here in the, in North America, at least within the African American community is black English or African American English. So we'll start there with, that's what I'm talking about is the language that's spoken by many, but not all African American people in the United States.
So when I talk about affirming students, what I'm talking about is making sure that they feel confident and comfortable with. Communicating with you, because communication is really the whole point, right? Like, that's why we're teaching reading, that's why we're talking to each other. So a, an affirming response to a student would be one that acknowledges that they have a facility with language, that they've got this and that they're, you know, that they're communicating.
You're picking up what they're [00:08:00] putting down. And it also lends to them being able to learn. So I again. As I said earlier, I believe like, depending upon where your school is, the language of your community could be black language. The language in your school could be black language, and that's absolutely wonderful.
So if I'm teaching a student let's say they say, oh goodness, I'm trying to think. Okay. The th i graph in the final position of many words can be pronounced in black language as so for instance, if the word is math. It may be pronounced as math if you are an, an active black language speaker. So if you ask a student to you know, read the word and they read math, you would say, wonderful.
Right. That's great because the pronunciation, it, it's matching the graph. New funding connection. You can also say, all right, let's spell the word math. Now, if they put MAF, you say, okay, that th digraph in the last position can be pronounced multiple ways. Here's how we spell it, [00:09:00] MATH. So we, we make sure we're teaching students the rules you know, spelling right.
Also honoring the way that they pronounce words, and making sure that we're supporting them with giving them a choice with how they, they speak because frankly. I mean, you know, my family both my parents speak black language and our, you know, multiple master degree people. And it is wonderful in finding you can grow up and be a successful human being and speak black language.
I hope that answers that.
Mary Saghafi: That's a fantastic answer to the question and I think that, it is very specific to what you're talking about, but it's also globally explicit teaching. Right. So I'm also we live in Atlanta, so lack language is actually a pretty common thing in the neighborhoods that we live in.
And so I feel more comfortable, but I did not feel very comfortable. Doing this approach. I feel like as a special education teacher, maybe my life you know, point of view or [00:10:00] however we wanna describe it. I see children who are speaking in language and their language may be impacted by speech impairment or it may be impacted by, you know, different language spoken at home.
It may be. You know, of the African American community. But I think that what you're touching on, which is not talked about enough, is affirming language in general, like saying, Hey, I see you. I'm going to double check that I understand what you're saying. It's okay to clarify. If you don't understand what I'm saying, I'm going to ask.
You, you are welcome to ask me. And I also think that giving that specific example of the digraph th can be pronounced many different ways. I think that is such a perfect example for all teachers to understand and know because there's a lot of different ways that we pronounce. But I think calling attention to.
Black language is [00:11:00] absolutely essential. And so I just wanted to commend you first for doing this and bringing this to our attention. This is just fantastic teaching, so keep it up. Let's keep talking more.
Dr. Jasmine Rogers: I, I'm glad that you, you feel that way. It's very helpful too. So, for me, in my scholarship, I do understand that my view, that black language is, the language may be you know, extreme for some.
I believe that all 160 of those dialects of English are their own language because they're a communication system. But we can go past that. The way that this research is very helpful in my context here in Washington DC is that we have speakers from all over the country. I mean from, excuse me, from all over the world.
So I currently tutor a student who's from El Salvador and she's teaching me, so I thought I was, I was killing it with my Duolingo streak. Absolutely not. So she's been teaching me six. Specific words from El Salvador, like how she speaks there which has been helpful for my understanding. So, for instance, I think, and I might say it wrong, but I'm working on it and I'm gonna be better like we say [00:12:00] Nino or Nina for a boy or girl, but in El Salvador, they say Peacha or Bcha or beach, right?
So we know if it's a boy or a girl. That's helpful for me to know when I'm working on you know, we're working, she's in high school, so working on high school level texts and I'm trying to go back and forth with my Spanglish and supporting her with learning. And when she says that word for the first time, I'm like, can you, can you share what that is?
And so now we have a learning opportunity. Another way that I solved this come up too, again, it's not just about you know, black language here. It's all the global black languages. I was supporting a student doing assessments in his native languages on harrick. So I don't know much about Amharic at all.
Luckily, thankfully we have technology, so I can use Google Translate. But what I did before I recognized that I was going to be sitting with him, I looked up the phone Eames and like what some words sound like for a speaker who's somebody who speaks Amharic before I did his assessment. That way when I got to some words, it had some different vowel patterns.
I knew that that [00:13:00] matches with the language that this young man has been speaking his entire life, and I did not mark him incorrect because I recognize that is just the way that he's producing the phone names based on how he has been speaking his entire life. So it was important because. I could have counted probably like four or five words that I would have marked incorrectly had I not known that information.
So for teachers of, you know, all of our students, it's important that you're familiar with the home language of your student as much as possible. I know it's a lot, right? Like I'm dealing technically, if you think about it, three languages, maybe more. 'cause I've got some French folks running around, but.
Knowing the, the patterns of the, the speech of your students is really helpful to make sure that you are not marking them incorrectly or saying that something is wrong, when in reality they're just producing the sounds that they have been, you know, conditioned to produce them their entire life, and now they're adjusting to a different language system.
Mary Saghafi: I am just thrilled to hear you speak this way. It was, [00:14:00] this is like such a probably overused example, but when I first came to Atlanta, I heard a lot of set and sit differences. So I grew up in Ohio in the Midwest, and so my. My vowels are really hard. My ads are really hard. My s are very over pronounced.
My is are very over pronounced. And so I think I was harder on kids at the very beginning, but we are so lucky to live in a time when technology can do these pronunciations for us. You can use AI or, or whatever website you're searching. So I think that. Researching the phone names that are common desk.
Such great advice for our teachers who are listening. That is one step that you can take to really make a better connection with your kiddos. And we all wanna have connections, so that's fantastic.
Shannon Betts: Jasmine, I wanna ask you, oh, I didn't mean to interrupt you. What were you gonna say?
Dr. Jasmine Rogers: I was just gonna say, Mary, you know, you being from Ohio, the way that you say your vows is perfect, it just [00:15:00] marks that you're from the Midwest and folks who say sit and set you know, the same, right?
Or like, for me it's like get and get, they're the same thing. That's a marker of both Southern American English and northern black English. And several because within, you know, black language, there's a lot of dialects too. Like, it just marks where, where folks are from. I will say as a short e, short I person who I'm, I'm doing my best, I oftentimes just use YouTube.
There's a lady who pronounces all 44 phone names very, very nice and beautifully and clear. I play her, you know, and we keep it moving and we say, you know, Dr. Roger, Dr. J is doing the best that she can. This lady on the internet is gonna help us with a number. We,
Shannon Betts: we'll, we'll need you to share that link with our list.
Dr. Jasmine Rogers: Oh yeah. I'll put it in the chat.
Shannon Betts: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. So how did you get into science of reading and structured literacy? Did you do that from the beginning of your career, or, or did you learn it well into the, your years of teaching? Like Mary and I [00:16:00] did.
Dr. Jasmine Rogers: So I sadly did not get into it earlier in my career, which is one of my regrets.
And it's not my, my fault, right? My teacher prep program just didn't didn't do the thing. I actually did do a Wilson Language training, and I don't know if we should be name dropping, you know, curriculums, but early in my career, but it was like a nice weekend, but we didn't have any materials or any follow up.
It was just something that somebody was like, oh. You can go do it. And so I did, which kind of piqued my curiosity. I also thought it was funny. I remember that video very vividly hearing the Boston and every one of the pronunciations in the video. So if you've ever done the training, you know what I'm talking about.
And I remember you being curious, but it wasn't until I was in the classroom 20 I think it was late 2018, but early 2019 the reading clinic was founded here in DCPS. And Mary k Clayman, the founder, she was looking for, you know, teachers. And I saw this and I was like, I've gotta do something.
You know, I had a pretty successful previous year with [00:17:00] teaching my kids to read and I was like, oh, I'm just gonna do this old school phonic stuff, because that's what was going, and I didn't know why it worked. So then I got connected to the reading clinic. I applied as a teacher and she was like, you've actually been trained in a lot of things.
You should be a mentor. So I mentored at the DC reading Clinic, and I promise you, alongside the first person that was my mentee, I was learning alongside her. And, you know, I still keep in touch with her. To this day we were learning together and that really sparked kind of my trajectory into getting into how to support folks with teaching reading better.
And then, you know. Here I am now. This is, this is, this is my life now.
Shannon Betts: Yeah. So then walk us through, like, how did you then like merge that with your identity as a black woman and your passion for, you know, you know affirming every child that you work with and the language that they have and.
Dr. Jasmine Rogers: You know, Mary and Shannon, how much time do you have?
Shannon Betts: You know, and, and the, you know, give us the short version and then people can contact you with further questions.
Dr. Jasmine Rogers: Right. So this, [00:18:00] the work that I feel like that I'm doing is, is hard work and it's also hard work, right. I had to come to terms with the harm that I caused black children. When I first started teaching, my first job was as a teacher, was a kindergarten teacher, and I was one of those people who was like, okay, you can talk however you want to at recess, but we're in this classroom.
We're gonna speak this way because that's what I believe is gonna get you, you know, a job and all this stuff. I did not realize how harmful that was until like three years after I left those students. And went and went to a different place. And so for me, I grapple with what harm I caused children and even shared a message that the way that they talk wasn't, you know, anything other than perfect.
It was just a marker of who loves them and how they were raised. So I feel like since then I have been working as hard as I can to support. Teachers and even myself on a journey of, you know, at one point I did something that was, that was wrong and I can make sure every single day I'm, I'm better and I'm getting better and I'm working to make sure that other people [00:19:00] are, are better and hopefully not causing harm as much as I did.
I will say that even to this day, I struggle with I don't necessarily believe in proper pronunciation, but sometimes I'll say a word and I'm like, man, where did that come from? I have a full doctorate and I do know multiple Englishes who said that? But I I feel like it's just a. When I see a student who for instance, is responding to a lesson and they're sharing, you know, in the comprehension portion of the lesson about the story, and they're sharing in black language and they're using quite literally every vocabulary word that I know in black language, and they have got the meaning, that's when I'm like, okay, this is good.
We, I'm connecting with the student and they're able to show me their facility with language and share it in a way that's meaningful for them. And like being able to make connections with students in that regard has been very affirming for me to know that I could make a change from the way that I used to frankly, [00:20:00] instruct students.
There is research too about teachers and their, they're deeply held beliefs that it is our job as teachers to teach the king or queen's English. And I see myself in that study every time I go back to reference it. And I would like to encourage any teacher that's listening, you absolutely can make a change at any point.
It is akay. You don't have to stick with something just because, I mean, if we did stick with things just because we didn't, then I would still be a balanced literacy lady. And we are, we're not doing that. Right. But. It is important for us to love our students, provide opportunities for them to feel connected in the classroom, and hopefully motivate them to latch onto the great things that we're teaching.
And we can do that if we're connecting to our students by, by giving them the ability to be themselves with their language.
Mary Saghafi: That is so spot on and I think that Shannon and I have tried to walk this walk alongside a lot of our listeners that you know, learning as you go and learning and when you know [00:21:00] better, you do better is very powerful and it doesn't erase the teacher guilt that you feel because I have a lot of teacher guilt about.
A lot of the practices that I thought were right at the time, and I think you have to think that through too, is that you weren't purposefully doing that. But causing harm is something that causes guilt and pain. And. A way to really like reestablish that is making that conscious effort every single time you approach it in a new situation.
I wanted to share something because I think this is really interesting what you were just talking about. So I had a student today and we were going through some comprehension questions and then we were building a paragraph together. And so I'm really big into sentence frames if the students need it.
And so I. I feel like I've kind of been leaning on sentence frames a little too much lately, and I don't want the kids to use my language when [00:22:00] they're writing a paragraph. I want it modeled for them, but I also really wanna hear what is their voice? What? What do they really take on? What do they really understand?
So just as you were sharing, you know, that your student was using black English to really. Explained what they know and understand. I really gave myself a chance to pause today and think that through, and that's one of my other like new checks that I just came up with like. Hold on, wait a minute. I'm not just feeding the information to students.
I'm really waiting for them to take the initiative and show me, and I can chunk it and break it apart for them. So I think that there's always this kind of back and forth that teachers have on any given day that you are trying to reiterate that, oh, this practice might not be the best practice. And being a reflection teacher I think is part of that.
But, I would love to hear anything else that you have found that's research based that we can kind of share with our listeners. I [00:23:00] think that that is, that's really powerful.
Dr. Jasmine Rogers: Yeah. And I'll even share to your anecdote the student that I'm tutoring, we're working mostly on writing and what has been helpful is.
Having her write in Spanish because her Spanish vocabulary use is impeccable. When she's working to translate, she is having difficulty finding like basically as beautiful of words in English. So what we've been working on too is a lot of vocabulary words. So like, oh, I'm gonna forget the name. Is it the Frayer model?
You know, the, the four square? Yeah. Just multiple ways to kind of get at the same idea how there are nuances and meanings of English words and really just going back and forth in writing. And I think to your point of allowing students to respond in their home language or in the way that suits them best in the moment is really helpful to see what's going on inside their heads.
So I would absolutely keep up that practice. But as far as a research-based practice there is more research being [00:24:00] done. With what's called translanguaging within African American communities, this work has been done within you know, international languages. So like Spanish speaking languages, translanguaging is simply utilizing all of your linguistic systems within a within communication.
So that has been for me, for me, especially with my Master's students. I have been sharing with them that it's important that whatever word or phrase is going to get the idea out best, that they should use it. And then it's my job as their listener, their teacher to, you know, figure it out. So I've been also applying that to, you know, the younger students too.
You, you just share, share your idea, share what's going on, and we will figure it out together because it's really important to see what's happening in your brain.
Mary Saghafi: I, I think that's really powerful. It also kind of Lents itself and [00:25:00] reminds me of the book study that we did about turn-taking with language and students, and it's called Strive for Five. I'm forgetting the author's name, but I promise we will link to it. And, it talks a lot about how the students will start to say something and how you affirm their language and then how you make these like meaningful corrections to their language or adjust their language just a little bit without but continuing to be affirmative and building their own vocabulary within that.
And so the goal would be that the students responds, the teacher gives feedback, this. The teacher would then ask a follow-up question, the student response, and then you give another piece of advice. I feel like I kind of butchered that, but I will, I I will share the model.
Dr. Jasmine Rogers: I think you're describing it fairly accurately.
What I would be careful of is making sure you're not doing what's called recasting. Now, I will say recasting and is, is an effective technique that speech language pathologists use, especially with younger children. So recasting is when a speaker says [00:26:00] something and then the receiver of the speech.
Says it back at them in the language that the receiver desires. So what ends up happening, sadly, with a lot of black students, is the receiver ends up saying no, or that's wrong, or something to the effect that shows the student that the speech that they, they just produce is wrong. What is more effective is doing almost like a, not a, I don't wanna say contrastive analysis, but that is effective.
But. Sharing with the student. Another way to, to share what they're saying and also making sure that the student is, is, is really honored with their, that, you know, as the receiver, what they're saying and you're saying, Hey, I've got another option for you in case you wanna use it. So you can absolutely show students multiple ways to speak.
Just be very careful with not saying, no that's wrong. Or shutting a student down. 'cause again. We don't talk about the science of motivation enough, but within the [00:27:00] science of reading, we need to talk about how students actually need to be able to attend to a task and wanna be in your classroom and wanna learn from you.
And it's not to say that there's not you know, room for correction in classrooms because, you know, children they wiggle all the time. They fall out of their seats. They do things that kids are supposed to do. Where really it is, is just making sure that you're supporting students with, you know, pushing them along in a positive way.
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Shannon Betts: Hey everyone, it's Shannon.
Mary Saghafi: And Mary, we're so grateful that you've joined us in the Reading Teachers Lounge. Whether you're a parent or an educator, you're part of our professional learning community and we love having you eavesdrop on our conversations.
Shannon Betts: Over the seasons, we've strived to bring you practical evidence-based strategies to support all learners.
We've chatted with amazing literacy experts like Dr. Timothy Shanahan and Dr. Katie Pace Miles about everything from impactful interventions to the science of reading.
Mary Saghafi: We've explored topics that matter to you, like supporting multilanguage [00:28:00] learners, understanding executive functioning demands in the classroom, and even making reading more fun and engaging.
Our goal is to break down the complexities of literacy and find those missing pieces to help every child unlock the magic of reading.
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Mary Saghafi: That's a super great way of, of sharing that. Just perspective and, and information.
It's not really perspective, but it's, it's understanding kids and understanding that the, the student motivation is really key in, in. Gaining students trust so that they feel safe enough to make and take risks with you in an environment that will push them beyond what they are normally comfortable with.
And so especially, and then also within a group of people who. They have not necessarily [00:30:00] chosen to be a part of. So I think that that's kind of unique too. So I would love to chat with you more about what else can we do as teachers for positive environment, intrinsic or extrinsic motivation within a classroom of diverse speakers.
Dr. Jasmine Rogers: I would say the number one thing is to be yourself. Frankly, I mean, I've met, you know, hundreds of educators over my lifetime and maybe thousands at this point. I don't know. There is something very unique and special about people who've decided to go into education for their career, and there is kind of a little light that's inside of us, whether we wanna admit it or not, that we spark in the environment where we are given the opportunity to teach people.
So I would say let let that little light of yours shine. Be yourself and also be in a position to know that like while you are absolutely the authority figure, you can and will make mistakes [00:31:00] alongside of your students. Be human with the, the little people that in your classroom or, you know, now I'm, I'm with high school students, sometimes the big people too.
And create an environment where everybody is feeling supported. I really think that part of my success as a teacher is because I. Two will be like, you know what guys? My brain is, is glitching. The hamster stopped running. Can we have a, can we have a break for a second? I think if I wasn't human with my students, I would, I would, I would have a lot less success with them.
So I would say first things first, be your full, true, authentic self in your classroom. And know also, you know, sometimes we have these classrooms that has 26 kids and we may not necessarily authentically connect with every single child. Wake up every day and just keep doing better. Do your best every day and know that there's gonna be some challenges, but take care of yourself and be yourself.
And I think that just genuinely connecting human to human goes so, such a long way. [00:32:00] Like I can't even think of many examples where I have not been able to communicate necessarily with a parent with the same language. But because we are, you know, vulnerable with each other. And, you know, whatever hand motions I'm doing and they know how silly I am.
We've been able to have connections. I remember a parent, actually, she and I did not speak the same language and at one point she came in and made me a, she brought me lunch and we did a lot of translating and she just wanted to say thank you so much for loving her student and always being so happy to see her.
And I'm like, I don't think I've ever actually spoken. A word to you, but the fact that she could genuinely feel love and a connection and was so just willing to bring me lunch, like, I don't know. I think if you're yourself, that would be my, my, my advice. Be yourself, be genuine, and, and, and love your kids.
Shannon Betts: That's lovely. That's just lovely. That's like advice that we could give ourselves today and then also our past selves. I wanna hear more about your research, so I kinda wanna circle back to the beginning of our conversation. And then I also [00:33:00] wanna know what you've learned from your research that like you wish you could have, you know, you, your kindergarten teacher self that you mentioned earlier, would've would do now, you know, or would've done then.
So like, and what do you want other teachers to learn from your research?
Dr. Jasmine Rogers: So I learned from my research one, as a researcher, I can't go in with biases, right? So I think I went in expecting most of the responses to be negative. As it turns out, it was 50 50. So that was to me, great news. And I took that bias from my teaching experience, from watching other people with students.
And so, number one, go in as objective as humanly possible. Number two. Is that you can tell a lot about a teacher by how they do interact with students. And it's not a lot about the teachers necessarily teaching style, but what's going on within them. So sometimes when I talk to teachers, I actually just check on how they are doing, you know, mentally what's going on at home.
Because sometimes the responses that that [00:34:00] are happening are. Had nothing to do with what is happening in the classroom. It has everything to do with, you know, I burned dinner last night, I woke up late this morning. I'm in quite a tizzy, you know, in front of the student. And sometimes it's a reflection of the biases that we hold within ourselves too.
So, I know, especially when I first started teaching, I genuinely believed that the only way that I was gonna be successful in life was if I spoke the King's English and I, you know, did all of this stuff and had whatever. I now know that that's false, but because I had that inner narrative, I ended up inflicting that on my students and that ended up showing them that, yeah, the way you speak isn't good at all and you shouldn't do that and you have to speak this way or else you're never gonna make it.
And that's not cool like that. That wasn't great. So I would use my research to go back to my early kindergarten, self kindergarten teacher self even. Actually, you put a little kindergarten. Me too. Shoot. That the way that I was raised, my parents [00:35:00] did the absolute best they can. They tried very hard to instill certain values in me because they wanted to see me succeed, and I'm grateful for that.
And on top of that, I learned that I thought that you only had to speak English one way in order to make it. And I would tell myself that I know now that that's not true. I have multiple examples in this world that that doesn't need to be the case and that you can fully be yourself. In your classroom as a student, as a teacher.
And you can learn how to read because that's the other thing we didn't even get deep into that, but we talk a lot about the phoning to graphene relationships. Well, when we talk about some of these phoning to graphene relationships, we need to recognize there are multiple ways that you can represent some of these graphemes.
And we can honor those ways depending upon where we are in the country too. 'cause Appalachian English, depending upon what part of Appalachia you're from, whether it's North Carolina or West Virginia, those phon demographic representations are gonna be different too. And just recognizing that, you know, you can teach a student how to read and they can retain their, their home language and [00:36:00] pronunciation because it's not a pronunciation test, right.
It's a reading test. That I think that would go, that would've gone a long way for me. Something that I learned in my research that could have helped me, but now I can help other teachers.
Shannon Betts: You were, you were so right. Mary and I, the last year we've been getting training on structured word inquiry and a lot of morphology instruction because we've just realized like how much our spelling system is meaning based versus sound symbol based, and so like removing that.
Emphasis or reducing that emphasis on that sound symbol relationship like actually does make it more culturally equitable. Yeah. That's really cool. I never really made that connection till just now.
Dr. Jasmine Rogers: Well, I'm glad you are. Yeah. 'cause it, it is I still believe, right, it is important for us to, you know, teach phone names and graphing like the individual sounds.
However, what you're saying too is understanding, I mean. We've got what, Anglo-Saxon, Latin, French, like all kinds of stuff going on within English and really [00:37:00] understanding those prefixes and suffixes can help a lot too.
Shannon Betts: Like you're on it and the etymological history of English and why there's still an O in people, you know, for that historical marker to make it, you know, connected to the other related words like popular and populous.
Mary Saghafi: I have noticed too, since teaching specific, explicitly teaching morphology now understanding what the base or the root. The base word for each word is it's so important and it really changes. Like today we were talking about how to spell the word disgust, and then my student said, oh, but if I add disgusting, then I need to add a T to it to make it disgusting.
But I said, okay, well let's talk about the word discuss. If we add discussion and then we look at. Disgust, is that the same word? And he was like, oh no, that doesn't make sense. A discussion is what a discussion is when you're [00:38:00] talking with two people. And disgusting smells bad. And I was like, Hey, we just figured out that how those spellings work.
So Right. It just. That is, that's real life. But it makes a lot of sense when the student can do that investigation and understand that difference and have the safety to be able to ask those questions. Right. And, and for my corrections to, to be meaningful to them.
Shannon Betts: Look, and because it's in that inquiry based environment, then it can be more affirming as well.
Mm-hmm. 'cause you're coming from a place of curiosity and communication from both points of view and you're testing things out.
Mary Saghafi: But, but in truth, I was so intimidated to teach morphology because I, I just wasn't very comfortable with it. But now that I've like practiced it a lot more, I'm definitely diving a lot more into it.
But it's, it's one of those pieces where like, ooh, it feels really intimidating. I don't know if I can, you know, accept and change my [00:39:00] practices this way, but a little bit at a time goes such a long way.
Dr. Jasmine Rogers: Yeah. And you know, you wouldn't believe, or maybe you would believe the amount of teachers who are learning more about language as they go through their, their scope and sequence and their curriculum.
I can tell you, oh my goodness, we were doing I think like a doubling rule or something way back when I first started and I'm like, oh, this makes sense, right? And I know how to spell buzz and all of that. But just to, just to see that. Teachers, make sure that you are open to learning. Again, be yourself.
Like it is great that you're learning new things while you're teaching your students. Just make sure you know, you, you check them before you get in the classroom. You know, make sure you, but it is great that you're learning these things as you go along.
Shannon Betts: Well, Jasmine, is there anything else you wanna share with our listeners while we've got you here in the read Teacher lounge?
Dr. Jasmine Rogers: Just, you know, like I was saying. [00:40:00] Be open to, you know, trying new things. Know that you're going to make mistakes, but every day that you are supporting your students and moving forward and being open to who they are and being affirming of them and loving them because you need love in a classroom.
You're, you're doing something great for children, so stick with it. And I know that. We're about to start approaching, you know, the, the, excuse me, the change in seasons, which can be a little tricky in our classrooms. Like as, as the sky gets a little bit darker for those of us in North America, make sure your light is shining.
'cause the students need it, we need it. And just, you know, keep, keep doing it. Keep teaching best practices for the students for foundational literacy.
Mary Saghafi: You are such a delight. I wish that you were teaching across the hall from me because you really, you do shine your light so bright, and I think that your messaging is so essential and I'm so grateful to try to use this platform to share this with more teachers because I do think it's a, it's a [00:41:00] topic that's.
Many people notice, but not many people have really done the hard work that you've done. So thank you so much for joining us and sharing with us. This has been lovely. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.
Shannon Betts: Can you share where like if anybody wants to get in touch with you or how they can find more about the work you're doing?
Dr. Jasmine Rogers: Oh, sure. Yeah. My website is jasmine rogers.com. I am on LinkedIn at Jasmine Rogers. O-G-E-R-S. No D. It's not the English one. And then I'm also on, I think, all social medias as Dr. Jco, N as in INDC.
Shannon Betts: We'll make sure those are linked as well, but it's just we wanted to have it well, as people are listening to so they can remember to look for it.
Yeah.
Dr. Jasmine Rogers: You put it in the, and just, yeah. Great.
Shannon Betts: Thank you. Thank you so much. I wish you had been across the hall from me too. Especially in my last homeroom teaching position. I was working in a school full of refugees resettle refugees, and it was like United Nations, you know, in every single classroom.
And
Dr. Jasmine Rogers: I feel like I should have, I mean, I could have [00:42:00] talked about that, just even understanding some of the journeys that our students have. Have gotten to us, right? Yes. Our students have, you know, schooling and interrupted all that and just,
Shannon Betts: right. Well, and they had so much trauma in their, you know, in some of the war torn areas and things like that.
And I hope that I was doing enough affirming behaviors back then working with them, but I know I could have done even more. And I wish I could have picked your brain back then. So I glad to know you now. You can do it now. I do. I do. I still, I still do work with English language learners. Just not quite to that like, level of concentration in one room.
Dr. Jasmine Rogers: Yeah. Yeah. So, but it, this seriously was a pleasure. I love you just being able to share the thing that I'm passionate about. And thanks for having me on you guys. Yeah. Keep
Shannon Betts: doing your research and we can't wait to see what else you're gonna be sharing with them. Yeah. I'm just, I gotta keep field.
Dr. Jasmine Rogers: I'm working on a book and it's just slow going, so like, fingers crossed, I can, I can actually do it.
Mary Saghafi: I was hoping you were going to share.
Shannon Betts: Finish it and we'll have you
Mary Saghafi: back. Yeah, definitely. Thank you again and it was so [00:43:00] lovely to chat with you.
Dr. Jasmine Rogers: Yeah, thank you guys.