03 Literacy as Social Justice w/ Nora CHahbazi

Mira Rubin: Welcome everybody to sustainability now, technologies and paradigms to shape the world that works. So glad you're here to join us here today, I'm your host Mira Rubin and I am thrilled to introduce my friend Nora Chahbazi. Nora is the founder and president of EBLI, Evidence Based Literacy Instruction and the Ounce of Prevention Reading Center in Flushing, Michigan. Nora is on a mission to teach the world to read and she’s trained thousands of teachers and tens of thousands of students in her center,in classrooms, and online at all different grade levels.

Nora has been a presenter at numerous educational conferences and was interviewed by Maya Angelou on the Opera radio show, that was highlighting ordinary people doing extraordinary things. She has also been on CNN and featured on ABC's Detroit 2020. Nora, we are so excited to have you here with us today, welcome.

Nora Chahbazi: Thank you Mira, I'm really honored and very happy to be here, looking forward to it.

Mira: Me too, me too, this will be great. Before we even get started, I think our listeners might be wondering why on a show about sustainability we might be talking about literacy and actually it's through knowing you that I became conscious of the fact that literacy is really a social justice issue. I thought it would be helpful if you could have people understand some of the statistics, really frightening social statistics that are tied to illiteracy in this country, because I think for those that can read, it's kind of an invisible problem. We're probably not aware that we know people that can't read.

Nora: Exactly and I agree, I was one of those people way back 20 years ago before my own child was a struggling reader and she was in gifted and talented because of her high scores in Math. I couldn't comprehend how is this child of a doctor and a nurse, which I was at the time, that is a struggling reader, that has had every advantage and is read to everyday of her life. A lot of people don't understand that only about 35% to 40% of 4th graders are proficient in reading in our country and that over 30 million adults are reading at a 3rd grade level or below. It's just--

Mira: That's horrifying.

Nora: They're not just people that you would think, “Oh, these are disadvantaged people or people who are poor," or whatever you may think. I have taught doctors, lawyers, millionaire business men and women, many college educated people who have never read a book in their life. The oldest person I ever taught was an 82 year old who had retired as the city planner of Los Angeles California had never read a book in his life. He had a master's degree and he had never read a book.

Mira: How does that happen? How can that even happen?

Nora: Many of these people are tremendously brilliant, my daughter included. They are often tremendously hands-on creative, very personable people, very bright. They are really good with simultaneous processing, sizing up a room and figuring out a situation. A lot of your artists, a lot of your builders, a lot of your architects, a lot of accountants, those type of people and real creative type of people, I would say, almost none if not none of them are reading to their potential.

Sub-literate is a term that I use, that they're not reading nearly as well as they could. Now, this gentleman, the 82 year old, he got by, they're very clever about getting people to help them, very clever about not revealing these struggles.

And again it's not that they can't read, he could read some. He said, “I would get a third of a way through a book and have to go back and keep rereading and I read so slowly that I forgot what happened at the beginning, so I never finished it." But, they're also typically really hard workers. Everyone who's watching this and everyone in this country knows many people, even though they may not know it, who are really hugely struggling with reading. Sometimes they'll say, “I don’t' spell so well or I don't have my glasses or I’m not that great of a writer."

Many people living in your own homes, you wouldn't even know because this is a really shame filled secret that a lot of people hold close to their heart and don't want anybody to-- It feels very vulnerable for people to know about it. They start very young being able to hide it and then they get better and better, so that their whole life revolves around the fact that reading and communicating through literacy is difficult for them. 85% of our people in the legal system are struggling readers, typically third grade and below.

There's a number that I had pulled out, $300 billion annually, the cost of illiteracy and sub literacy to our country: every year, $300 billion. Because children who are struggling readers—only because they haven’t been taught-then become adults who are struggling readers that learn coping mechanisms. But a lot of their lives, time and energy are spent focusing on how to cope and hide this shameful secret is what is often thought of.

Mira: What a way to live. You've got your heartbreaks. You said that they're not taught but the truth is we are taught how to read in school. So, what's the problem, where's the disconnect?

Nora: Everyone is typically taught something about reading in school for sure, but the most horrifying thing to me that I found out through these years of learning on the job, because I don't have a formal education in education-I have seven years of college education in nursing, I was a neonatal ICU nurse-but I don't have any formal education in reading instruction. Though, many people have said you probably have several doctorates from all that I have learned, but not through the education system.

The most horrifying thing I found out, and this was told to me by a college professor who taught people who were becoming teachers is that, teachers aren't taught in college how to teach reading. I was told that way back before I even taught my own daughter over 20 years ago. I thought, “That can't be true."

Mira: It makes no sense.

Nora: It seems a little dramatic and she had been a professor at a huge university for over three decades and she said, “No, the research says exactly what you're supposed to do to teach anyone to read to their highest potential. It is not taught to teachers in colleges. Actually, I was so insistent on making that happen to teach my students what the research says, to teach anybody to read, that I got basically kicked out of the-- “she said, “I had tenure so I didn't get fired but people who had been my friends for 30 years or more wouldn't speak to me anymore.” The uproar was tremendous, so, that's a huge problem. We have teachers who are paying a lot of money thinking that they're getting what they need to be able to teach students and then they go and they have half or sometimes more than half of their class, easily 30% to over 50% of their class who are struggling readers. The higher grade level to teach, the more struggling readers they have because there's more and more of load that you're supposed to have or words you’re supposed to know and that type of thing as you go up in the grades.

So, these teachers don't have the tools that they need. They keep going and getting more tools that don't work well. Of course, they think there's something wrong with the child, is what it comes down to, or there has to be something here. I am working my tail off, doing everything I could possibly do, that I paid all these money for to get my undergrad, my master’s, and reading all kinds of stuff and it's not working. It never occurs to them, like it really probably shouldn’t, that, “Wow, maybe it's because I don't have the tools, I don't have what I need to be able to teach these children."

It's the tools that are defective not the child. It then becomes a big-- because I really-- after I taught my daughter, it took me three hours to teach her to read and she was reading chapter books.

Mira: Now wait, wait. There are people who are going through college, through masters programs and they are coming to teach kids how read and they're not able to teach kids how to read-and you taught your daughter to read in three hours?

Nora: True story, I know it sounds like swamp land in Florida, but yes I did.

Mira: [laughs]

Nora: I did, I read this book. Actually, the professor from Michigan state that I had talked to, the one I was telling you about, she had a reading center and my mum had twin 12-year-old neighbors that were in special ed and they went to her reading center over in the Lansing area. And in 12 hours of instruction they no longer qualified for special ed. I'm like, "That's kind of crazy too." When I called this lady, I said, "What are you teaching? Is it Phonics, is it Whole Language?” Teachers are either taught one of these is great and the other is horrible, either way. She said "It's neither." There's good things of course in both of those, some components, but the majority are going to actually be even more detrimental to the kids-especially struggling readers. The research shows what you need to do. She told me of a book called “Why Our Children Can't Read and What You Can Do About It.” It's by Diane McGinnis. She's a cognitive psychologist.

Mira: Let me just interrupt you for a second. Is that still available in print?

Nora: It is, yes.

Mira: We'll have a link to that on the website. Any other resources that we discuss, you'll be able to find on the podcast notes page of the sustainabilitynow.global website. Sorry.

Nora: Okay, sounds good. The book is still and I've read hundreds of books, maybe more than hundreds, since then. It's still my favorite book on reading because she was just very straight out. I had been researching for six months what to do to help my daughter. I had been to reading conferences, I had read research, I had read books, and I got this book and it's like, "Finally something makes sense."

After reading it, in three hours I taught my daughter who could memorize any story in school. She could memorize the whole entire story, she could come home and read it without even having the book, but she couldn't read a sentence that was pulled out of it. She could not read anything she hadn't already memorized. She came home with a little “Bailey Schoolhouse” chapter book and read the entire thing, after three hours of instruction by the way. Read the whole thing cover to cover, told me all about it. She's never had any reading difficulty since. She's actually getting married next month. She's 27 years old and in college for honors courses. It's just no problems. Her spelling took two years to remediate because that's always harder to-- takes a little bit longer to undo that poor spelling. So, I taught her three hours.

Then I started teaching other people's kids in my home and that kind of snowballed, opening this reading center, and creating my own system, and all kinds of crazy stuff. The thing of it is is the answer is very simple and straightforward. People will come to us. We see kids in my reading center-it’s an average of 9.5 hours. Some are 2 hours, some are 35.

Mostly, especially when people are going to a remediation place, we are teaching classroom teachers mostly. That's our main focus. To teach classroom teachers who teach all children because my daughter would not have become one of those who needs to have Title One or a pullout remediation thing, but to teach all students.

At our reading center, people come from all over the country where they have been oftentimes for years in remediation programs that they haven't made much progress, certainly not to grade level or above. It's an average of nine-and-a-half hours. We get about two grade-level gains in that amount of time but that's an average, our kindergarten kids as well as our 10th grade people. The older kids get a lot more gains, and younger of course go a little bit slower. It's not rocket science. It's not as complicated as everybody likes to think or the educations establishment really likes to make you think.

There's a lot of publishing companies and a lot of places that are making a ton of money that-$67.8 billion that we spent between 2000 and 2010 with No Child Left Behind—most of that is going to the publishing companies. It's not going to the teachers. It's not going to-- It's a lot of stuff the schools buy thinking that this stuff is going to teach the kids when the teachers deliver it to them, but it's not. What we say is, “Teachers are what teach the children and the adults, and the teachers need to have the tools that they need to be able to get their students, whatever age they may be, to their highest potential.” We're talking above grade level highest potential. Not just like, "Oh, we might make a little bit of gains." If you like my third daughter who I taught when she first went to school because I was paranoid, she was in first grade and she was at a seventh grade level in first grade. She could read great.

Mira : Oh my heavens [laughs].

Nora: The English code is complex, but also, there's a logic to it. When you teach the logic of the code, anybody can break it. It's just like the CIA. You teach the code, you can figure it out. When you teach them how to do the code without a lot of rules and exceptions to rules or ask them to guess words or look at pictures to be able to-instead of reading the words, when you teach the code and you help them crack the code and then utilize it so they're automatic, it frees up everything so that they can then comprehend and enjoy what they're reading, and do the work of school along with actually enjoying what they’re reading.

Mira: That's amazing. Let's talk about the code because you've broken it down into something very systematic. When you first exposed it to me, it was a revelation. I can read okay. I think I'm a good reader actually, but breaking the the English language down into these component pieces, it had never occurred to me. I'm wondering if maybe you could lay that out for our listeners a little bit so they get some idea of this magic power you have.

Nora: I want to try to do it with words. It's a little more challenging with words. I can say too, I've always been a great reader. I've always been a great writer too. I could read about 300 words a minute, the first time I tested. The average person is about 250. I'm already above. Since I've been doing EBLI and teaching EBLI, which I do extensively of course, I now read about 425 words a minute. I am a tremendously fast and better reader.

Words like “convenience” and “hors d’oeuvres” and words that I didn't- “definitely” was another weird one for me that I-- let’s say I struggled with, using the EBLI process, I will never misspell them again in my life. That's important to note that EBLI works phenomenally with struggling readers, but EBLI also works phenomenally with all readers, with great readers too.

How the code works is that the English language came about by-- I say us but it wasn't me. It was those guy's over in England, Samuel Johnson, and there was a guy before him that actually borrowed from a bunch of different countries for our spellings. They came up with the spelling system because it wasn't working well. The pictographs on caves and communicating that way, we needed a system that we would all agree on.

They came up with the English alphabetic code. What makes it complex is the fact that we plucked some from the Danish, and then some from the French, and some from the Germans, and some from the Romans. We have a lot of different unique pieces of the code but there is a pattern to them.

There's three concepts that really make our language and the code of our language unique. One is that in English, when we say a sound out of my mouth, a sound can be spelled with one letter, like the letter "m" in "me”. That's a one-letter spelling for a sound. A sound can be spelled with two letters. You have "ch" like in “chip.” That's a two-letter spelling for one sound. Or you have the 'ea' spelling, E-A like in "eat", that's a two-letter spelling. Sounds that we say can be spelled with one letter, they can be spelled with two letters, three letters can spell a sound.

If you look at the word "high" like "I could jump very high." "H-" and then "igh" is the symbol that represents the sound "i". Three letters can spell a sound, and then also four letters. So, O-U-G-H in though, that's the spelling for "o". EIGH in eight. That's the spelling for "a". The first concept that makes English tricky is one, two, three, or four letters can spell a sound.

We teach our kids in kindergarten and beyond about the one-letter spelling. They know that A is "a" and B has "b" for the most part, but then they go to read the word eight, and then they start reading “e-i-g-h-t” How does- It doesn't make any sense. That's a problem. We teach that in a way that's very explicit, and then we go for the implicit learning of now you're going to apply it. We don't have to teach the whole crazy code which is good news too. We teach so much of it explicitly, and then they apply it to the rest of the code.

The second thing about English that is really a challenge is that we have about 40 sounds. If you look at research, they'll say 37 to 44 sounds in English so I say about 40. About 40 sounds in English, and they all can be spelled in multiple ways. If you think of the sound "sh," if you look at the word shop or wish, we have that s-h for "sh". In kindergarten, kids usually know that, first grade kids, but then, there's 20 ways to spell the sound "sh"

They know one. They go to spell nation, the T-I is "sh" They don't know that. They spell it with an S-H. They're not sure about that. Special, CI is "sh", sugar, just the s is "sh" In mission, the SSI is "sh" There's 20 ways to spell "sh" Every sound, consonant and vowel, can be spelled in a multiple number of ways, usually about 10, but the "sh" sound is the winner.

How do you deal with that? How do we deal with that when we're reading and how do we deal with that when we're spelling. EBLI teaches it again very explicitly, and then we apply it. It teaches explicitly and apply it through reading and writing. Often reading is taught, either teach the code or teach reading, but don't let the two combine. It's kind of like, "We have a car with only- Here's the engine and here's the frame." You have to have them both together. That's the second concept.

The third concept in English, which causes a lot of those phonics rules like two vowels go walking or all kinds of rules that are not consistent, many of them work less than 50% of the time. But people are like, "How else do we teach this?” But then the rules cause confusion with the kids too. This third concept and the way EBLI teaches it, makes it very straight forward, which is nice. But this is that, in English, if you're looking at the same exact letter, different sounds can go with it.

If you look at the letter A, it can be an "ɑ" like in at. If it's A like in the word "ate” But in my name Nora, it's “uh” So ɑ and A, those are the short and long sounds that people talk about. There's seven other sounds that go with the letter A. It can be "a" in Nora or "a" in father or "a" in law or "a" in stomach. There's seven ways or nine ways it sounds just for that one letter. Happens the same thing for consonants.

So c-h. You were asking me about my last name. How do you say that? Well, it's C-h-a-h-b-a-z-i. Most people would think, Chahbazi like a "ch" in chip . Or you are wondering is it Chahbazi like the "ch" in school, or the winner is "sh" for Shahbazi because those two letters can be "c, sh, or ch" The same exact spelling we have different sounds.

When you have that going on and nobody tells you about it, all you get are confusions, and a lot of people who hate reading and try to avoid it at all costs, which is tough when you're 12 years in school for six, seven hours a day. Those concepts are unique. Other languages have them to a degree, but not to the degree of English.

Then you have to deal with big words, big multi-syllable words, which EBLI deals with. Then you have to have skills to be able to manage these concepts. The skills are blending sounds together. You say the sounds in my name, N-o-r-a, and then you put them together--Nora. Blending is just putting the sounds together.

We teach our kids this in kindergarten with words like “cat”, and “run”, and “top”, but we forget about words like “directions,” and “simultaneous” and all that type of thing. The blending sounds together, pulling sounds apart, or segmenting is one of the number one things that correlate with comprehension. What are the sounds in car? C-a-r.

Pulling each of those sounds apart with one second in between—it's also going to help you access the code to read it and write it-but also it's going to help with comprehension and fluency. We do that and they are teaching that more in little grades, in kindergarten, and first grade especially, but they teach it just auditorily not matching it with a code. We have a very explicit process where you match it with the code.

Then phoneme manipulation where you pull a sound out, or push another one in, and move sounds around a word. If somebody said, my name as “Noray”, they’d pull out the A, and push it in “Noruh.” Those concepts and skills are the fabric of what EBLI is. It is the foundation almost every student, and pretty much almost every teacher is missing. If they're not missing it completely, they have tremendous holes in it. We really strengthen and focus on that with EBLI but also we're big on accuracy. You don't get to guess words and put in what you think makes sense, you don't get to spell whatever way you want to. We have to use the code that was created for us. We apply it in reading and writing, and we apply it with accuracy. Kids and adults move really far really fast because it makes sense, and it's also fun. We do a lot of work on whiteboards and all that kind of stuff.

Mira: Nora, with the statistics that you quoted its certain that there are people that are listening to this that know that they could improve their reading at the very least and maybe learn how to read from the get-go. I want to take this moment to ask you about resources for people. How do they get trained, what's available to them?

Nora: Okay. We have our reading sector but our main focus of what we do is we train teachers. Either we train them in person-- Not just teachers. We train teachers, we train parents, we train volunteers, we train peer professionals, we train anyone who wants to teach somebody how to read. That's more of an intensive, we you have three day trainings that we're kind of fading out there in person, and it's a very intensive three days.

We have a seven week training that anyone from anywhere in the world can get access to, which is really exciting to be able to teach anyone to read. Whether they teach it in a whole classroom, which is majority of our teachers, or if they teach in a small group or one on one, special ed, it doesn't matter.

We have in person and online options to teach the teachers who are going to be teaching the kids. When I say teachers, I don't have a degree in education. When people say, I'm not a teacher, well I'm not a teacher either officially. I teach in thousands of classrooms, and I've taught countless people. We've taught high school students, anybody who is interested in teaching reading can be trained. If you're wanting to learn, as far as what I say to parents, or anyone who themselves want to become a better reader, we have some apps that we made. Our our apps are four dollars and ninety nine cents. There are two that are beginning reading instruction that are called EBLI Island and EBLI Space. EBLI Island has been used as young as three year old students, but it’s also been used with adults who are non-readers.

It is going to teach all of the initial code, the one-letter spellings, and a few of the two-letter spellings, and how to blend and segment and do all those kinds of things. That's available on iPads, not iPhones, and android tablets or phones.

The continuation of that is EBLI Space which is going to get into a little more of teaching the sight words by sound, a lot of two, three, and four letter spellings, some multi-syllable words, always putting in the context of stories too. That one is only available on iPads right now; it's being built for Android.

Those two are kind of our initial instruction. Whole schools have their K1 using it for their little kids; parents really using that a lot. Then we have EBLI Sight Words Made Easy, and that's going to teach you those concepts I talked about. It's going to actually have you experience one of each of those, and then it's going to move into teaching all of your sight words by sound.

Sight words are those words that little kids a lot of times are shown in flash cards to memorize, like “what,” “when,” “that,” “those,” “of,” “for.” They flash them because they want them to learn them and be able to say them automatically, which we want them to also, but we never teach them by a whole word flash-carding because they look a lot alike. “What,” “want,” “when,” and “went”; they all look very much alike. “Of,” “off,” and “for” look very much alike.

This app teaches it by sound and even for teachers, adults, good readers, they're like, "Woh" It kind of blows your mind when you get into that app because there's a lot of different code in there that you weren't familiar with. That is what I would say to people who want to get somewhat better at or even faster reader, that type of thing. That would be the $4.99 app, and you can put as many people on one device as you want.

It also teaches the homophones like “there,” “their,” and “they're” which is one of my pet peeves that everybody messes up. We teach those by sound, and then we put them into writing. It also has writing and spelling in it. That app is just like a goldmine, really.

Anybody who for their own personal self, and they want to dabble or they want for their child, I would say go there. If you're talking to somebody reading at a second grade level and older, Sight Words Made Easy, and somebody reading below that, EBLI Island and EBLI Space.

Mira: Beautiful. Again, we’re going to have links to these resources on the show notes page on our website at sustainabilitynow.global. Wow! [laughs] Let's just talk about how you got to this point. You talked about your daughter's journey. What I want to talk about is some of the hurdles that you've encountered, and how you've overcome them. Because we're all about transformation and how that happens.

Nora: OK, so, what the challenges have been, have been many. You know, I always think, why am I doing this?

Mira: [laughs] We'll get to that soon too.

Nora : It was very traumatic. I actually had been kind of in a state of depression at the point when my daughter was struggling. I thank her because she totally pulled me out of it really quickly. I just didn't know like, what am I supposed to be doing with my life? What's the point here? What am I up to? We've been in the military, and our whole life had changed. It was just a really kind of dark spot in my life. It was like something just yanked me out of the deep, and pulled me into the light of, this is what you're supposed to be doing lady. It wasn't even a thought or a plan. It just has kind of kept pulling me along.

I couldn't quit doing this, even if I wanted to. It's too much of a passion, and a mission, and a desperation for the suffering. I mean, I saw and experienced the suffering of my own child; but the suffering that I've seen over the last 20 years, that's not necessary. That's to me, the most horrible thing. This is preventable. The suffering of teachers, bless their hearts, the suffering of students, kids that come to us from all over the country and adults that come to us that are just-- literally their hearts are broken, their souls are ripped out. They think they're dumb, they think they're stupid, they think they're broken, they think they can't.

There's been many people-- I come from outside the system which is-- Many people inside the system have said to me, "How did you ever even get into any schools, much less over 350 of them?" This might sound corny, and I understand that, but truly, the only answer I can say is divine intervention. It really hasn't been me, it's been meant to be.

The places who are open, and some that are not as open, but mostly places that are open, that's who are attracted to us. We don't really advertise. I haven't in 20 years, and I'm starting to change that. I thought, "How can it be that here I am this nurse who's a single mom with no education in education and no background in business or anything? How can I have the answer? How can this be that good of an answer that it's really going to help anybody, anybody if they can speak, to be able to learn to read?"

It does, and it has. Sometimes I think any system has issues and the educational system is not immune to that. Trying to work within a system while working outside the system is not a walk in the park. There are many times where I want to put my head down and cry and run screaming from the room too, but I think there are so many people who want what we have.

There are so many people who are desperate to help children and also desperate to help teachers. There are those that have a really hard time changing. They've learned what they learned in the college system and the whole system throughout, and they just are in their comfort zone, staying there. That's good. We get a little push-back of that, but not too much because it's not like we go out and say to schools, "You should do EBLI.” They come to us when they're ready. That's good.

Then I think too, a big difficulty is, how is it when you have the answer to cure an ill that's so gargantuan, how do you get it out to everyone in a way that is efficient and that would work really well and it's affordable to all those who want it and can benefit from it. Finances have been a huge challenge for many many years. Keeping the fidelity of the instruction, that has been a really significant challenge. Because people who find out what I do, and they really start to get the enormity of it, often want to partner or help out or support. But, they also want to change the way I'm doing things. They want the number one thing to be money, as opposed to the number one thing to be the best and highest for these kids and the teachers and the adults and the students and everybody who's learning. That has really been a significant challenge, actually. To have to work with limited funds so much. I've gotten really creative about that over the years.

Mira: [Laughing] That’s a whole other show. That would be great.

Nora: Yes, and people who want to help financially, but they want to help financially to get more in the traditional “make more money and that's what business is about.” This has never been a traditional business in that way to me. I don't think about "Oh, how do we make?" That's not what I think. I think about how do I get to more teachers, and how do I get to more learners so that I can help decrease their suffering, or they can get access to this information and this instruction that will help decrease their suffering. A lot of times, the education system is not very open to that. They have their way of doing things in many ways. That's a challenge. There has been many challenges.

Mira: So much of what you just said really plays on my heartstrings and my particular passion, which is about assisting people to connect to their mission, passion and purpose. I'm designing a course actually, that will be released soon to assist people in that, and you just talked about, you hit so many of the points that are covered in that course. First of all, your values. One of the things that’s brought you success is knowing your values and staying true to those values in the face of any other kind of possible temptations. That's phenomenal.

The other thing is that you're driven by a sense of mission. You're clear, you're going to help the world to read-and that drives everything so that when you are wanting to scream and run from the room, or put your head on the desk, and cry, it's what gets you back from that. It brings you back.

Nora: Right! It does because I have run screaming from the room and many times I put my head on the desk and cry too. The pull of this being my mission, and my passion and and my purpose, that's what this is. It's too strong. Even if I wanted to try to truly run from it, I know I never could.

I don't have that feeling nearly as much anymore. Just because also it's your mission and your passion and my purpose—my mission, passion and purpose I should say, doesn't mean it's easy all the time. I think that's an important thing to say. It's not like "Oh, it’s just tiptoeing through the tulips and it's all hunky dory.”

Mira: Life isn’t easy. And when you don't have that sense of mission, passion and purpose, then when life gets challenging, you end up sort of drifting and in deep depression. This notion of also grace, when you said divine intervention, but grace occurring when you're aligned with who you authentically are and what you're here to do, magic happens all the time.

Nora : If I could talk on that a minute, too because, yes I can talk about the challenges, we all have those and everything, but If you look at the rewards,oh my gosh, in the uplift in the lives that are changed because of this work that we're doing, I mean, not just the ones that I'm touching, but then you have teachers and they're touching kids and the stories.

I've just been going through some of my files and stuff and coming ups with a lot of testimonials and notes and letters that people have written to us-parents and teachers. The unbelievable changes, it's almost miraculous changes that have happened in whole classrooms, whole schools of children, and in just one-on-one, the fact that we are changing the world. The work that we're doing here, and the other people that are doing it, we have many thousands of them now, we are changing the world. Through literacy it's one of the core ways and there's nothing no matter how much you want to run from the rooms and cry, there's nothing that can really squelch that true pure joy of that and making a difference and being of service.

Mira: It has a social impact in terms of crime, in terms of even way beyond personal satisfaction, finance, employability, family life, everything, it reaches into every arena.

Nora: Emotional and mental health of the learner and of the person. There's just so much of that internal trauma that is turned around and that's a process too, but of the people, especially when you get into older people who are struggling, but even a lot of our little second, third, fifth graders. Their soul is so squashed and just so bruised and injured and to see them blossom, that's the cool thing with our reading center too, we get to see it every day with these beautiful little souls coming through here, and you just watch them flourish. It's very cool.

Mira: It's so rewarding, right?

Nora : Two of my staff right now are at a graduation for a gentleman who, he came to us at 25, he could only read the word “is” and he had been incarcerated. He had tried to commit suicide. His dad actually cut him down when he did try to hang himself. He had everything that you could possibly imagine. He was so angry, and so-- Oh my gosh, bless his sweet heart, but he's graduating from high school today.

Mira: Wow.

Nora: He's now reading at a seventh grade level and loves to read and write. Little, big, everyone in between really making a difference. There's just so many. Working also with a doctor on the other end, a cardiovascular surgeon who is renowned internationally, who was only reading 98 words a minute, which is about a third grade level but he's so brilliant. He's been able to pass his boards to do all his work.

Mira: He's not a native English speaker.

Nora: He's not. He came to the United States at 15. He has three languages that he can read and write. He's been a very quick fast, but again, a lot of suffering. He was very shameful and very embarrassed about the fact that this has been a struggle for him.

Mira: There are two other things I want to discuss. One is, you had recommended a book called Bridging the Reading Gap, or The Reading Gap?

Nora: It's called The Reading Gap.

Mira: I read it and I was amazed. It was Autobiography of a man who learned to read after he was 50, correct?

Nora: He was 48.

Mira: 48, and he was a teacher. He was a teacher! The thing that I want to discuss is the fact that even into his 80's, he had residual emotional impact from the life that he had led being unable to read. I want to talk about how identity is tied up with the whole reading ability or lack of ability and how transcending that is also as important as the actual skill.

Nora: Right. Well, and that is something that we see especially with adults, but we also see it with our younger students, middle school, high school even young as third grade, I would say. These children and adults, once reading is difficult for them-life revolves around literacy, reading and writing-so when that's difficult for you, and you're stuck in a classroom, six to seven hours a day doing the thing that is torturous for you, then you have to do more of it usually after school and even before, because you're not good at it.

Then you're surrounded by a world where they give you birthday cards you can't read or you have a menu that you can't figure out. A lot of their identity is about this, I am a struggling reader or a non-reader. John Corcoran that you talk about, he's actually a dear friend of mine now. I met him about ten years ago by picking up the phone and calling him. The same thing, he describes it as a hole in your soul. Once it's there, it's very challenging to fill it up even after you become a good reader and writer and this is not an issue in reality anymore, still mentally and emotionally, it’s very challenging to give that up because so much of your identity is wrapped around it, especially for adults. When we have adults that come to us, they don't really expect that we're going to teach them how to read because no one else ever has and most of them have been to everything under the sun; and then we do. I think that an issue with EBLI with adults quite honestly is that it works too well. It works too quickly.

That’s my sense because very quickly they become readers and then the thinking, especially from those who I’ve been able to get back after they disappear is, “Wait a minute, my whole life has to change. I'm going to have to change my job? What’s my wife going to think? She’s always been the one that is the reader. What’s going to happen? What’s going to be expected of me?” All of those fears, but also they still have in their mind, long after they become a good reader, that “I’m still not a good reader.” There's a big lag there between that.

The emotional and mental piece of it and I especially think from high school on, is often ignored and it's really important when people, their whole life and so much time and energy is wrapped around hiding this shameful secret that they have. Then it's like you're just shifting this whole thing for me and I don't know what this is going to mean here for my life. I think that that can be really an issue that isn't thought of often both by the person who's going to learn. We have an adult that's coming in today too and I talked to the interventionist that's going to be working with them and said, “You have talked to him how he is going to learn to read. Has he thought about that?" We’re addressing those types of things and knowing that sometimes you might feel a little angst about that because it's changed.

Mira: Or a lot of angst because everything turns upside down. Why I'm highlighting that with you is really to emphasize the power of belief and self-perception. That's another thing that we work with the training that we're building and the coaching that we do is to address limiting beliefs, self-sabotaging behaviors and transcending that and how important it is. The last thing I wanted to say Nora to you is that, you are proof that one person can change the world. You've stepped up to that role and taken ownership of it and you are a gift to the world for doing that and I just want to express my gratitude to you and to say what an honor it is to witness what you're up to.

Nora: That warms my heart Mira, thank you so much. It’s exciting work for sure and I don't Know, we just keep moving one foot in front of the other and keep moving toward-- Doing for the best and highest good.

Mira: Fabulous. As just parting words, do you have any other resources you might want to recommend, any kind of particular action steps or ways that our listeners can support you and your mission?

Nora: Thank you. Our website is ebli.com.

Mira: That’s E-B as in boy-L_I.com

Nora: The “i” sometimes gets people on that. Yes, ebli.com. There's a lot, if you scroll to the bottom of our home page and you click to our YouTube page, it's called ebli too, if you go there through YouTube there's so many great videos on there that explain more about the English language and there's just a lot of interesting information in there. Another resource from our website would be to go into our blogs. We have amazing stories from schools that we interviewed in different-- stories from clients and that type of thing. Those are always heartwarming, but there's also really good informational stuff like all kinds of books for different levels of readers.

There's a great blog in there that we always send our teachers to, it's called Activities to Accelerate Learning. It’s a lot of cognitive processing training that's movement type of things and there's videos in there of me doing this with kids and also there's directions of how you can do it yourself. They work for anybody to really improve learning. There’s a lot of different interesting things in there. Those are some of our main ones.

I'd highly recommend The Reading Gap that Mira talked about, John's book. If you want to hear his whole story for the most part, he's got a book called The Teacher Who Couldn’t Read that tells his whole story how he ended up and got through high school in college and being a high school teacher of history in English and Phys Ed he did for a little bit, for 17 years without being able to read and write at all. He talks about how that happened and people think that's so odd and strange but it really isn't. There’s many many educators who are struggling readers that I have worked with and taught too, both in training and at our reading center.

Mira: What we'll do is we're going to have links for everything that we discuss here on the podcast notes page on sustainabilitynow.global and if there are additional resources that you want to give us we'll make sure that we make them available to folks. Nora, thank you so much for being here today.

Nora: Thank you Mira and anybody who is listening, I just appreciate all of you. I love telling the story and doing whatever is possible to promote literacy and get it out there.

Mira: Great, I just want to say thank you to all our listeners, we couldn't do this without you. You're the ones out there making it happen. I also want to say thank you to our producer Scott Bille. And, that's it for today. I’m your host Mira Rubin. Until next time, live your best life, love the world around you and together we can save the world.

Music: Thank you for listening to sustainability now produced by Scott Bille. Visit sustainability now global for resources related to today's program and be sure to subscribe, share and follow us on social media for more solutions to shape a world that works you.