In this episode of the Digital Learning Today Podcast, Jeff welcomes Ilene Rosenthan and Kathy Maximov from Footsteps2Brilliance on the program to discuss how they have been successfully engaging parents and accelerating literacy for more than a decade.
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About our Guests:
Ilene Rosenthal
Ilene is a seasoned educator and executive who brings over 25 years of experience designing, developing, and implementing innovative technology to accelerate learning. She was a co-founder of Lightspan, the first educational software company to connect school and home through videogame technology. She also served as President of Strategic Initiatives for Achieve3000, a company that developed groundbreaking technology to differentiate content based on each student’s individual Lexile reading level. Ilene currently serves as CEO of Footsteps2Brilliance®, a company designed to scale early learning by connecting school and home through mobile technology and expanding strategies for parental involvement in order to help all children realize their full potential. Ilene began her career as a teacher, during which time she designed curriculum and authored textbooks. In her capacity as a lawyer, she has served as General Counsel to the Government Operations Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives and as an Assistant United States Attorney in the District of Columbia. She also served as General Counsel to the Software Publishers Association (now SIIA) and Special Assistant to the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). Ilene received her J.D. from Georgetown University and her B.A. from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn.
Kathy Maximov
Kathy is a product manager, blended learning expert, and business development professional with nearly 20 years in the educational technology industry including early education as well as corporate and teacher professional development. Kathy is passionate about education. After launching her career as a classroom teacher, Kathy found her niche working with educational technology design teams to create engaging content that would help all children learn how to read. Since that time, she has successfully managed large-scale software and app releases, created and executed strategic business partnerships, coached district, and school leadership to create transformative early literacy initiatives, organized pilot projects, written teacher guides, led design and development teams, developed complete e-learning solutions, and trained hundreds of educators around the world.
Links of Interest
- Website: https://www.footsteps2brilliance.com/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/MyF2B
- LinkedIn:Â https://www.linkedin.com/company/footsteps2brilliance/
- Facebook:Â https://www.facebook.com/Footsteps2Brilliance
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Transcript
Hello, everybody,
and welcome to the
TeacherCast Educational Network.
My name is Jeff Bradbury,
and I have a fantastic show
for you today.
Today, we're talking all about literacy.
And of course,
we can't start any podcast
without talking about my edutriplets,
10 years old,
and they're reading every
single thing they can get their hands on.
Today,
I have two amazing guests talking
all about a great program that they've
created to help young
students enjoy a love of literacy.
I want to bring on today
from a great website called
Footsteps to Brilliance, Ms.
Eileen Rosenthal and Kathy Maximoff.
Eileen and Kathy, how are you today?
Welcome to TeacherCast.
Thank you so much.
We're great and really
appreciate being on here with you.
Excited to be here, Jeff.
Well,
let's get started here because I love
talking about reading.
I love talking about literature.
I love watching my kids open up books.
The other day they were at a
library and in an hour,
I think they each went
through like 10 and 11 books.
It is so important that we
have the supports for
students as they are
picking up these literary skills,
especially in the younger grades.
Talk to us a little bit
about what's going on at
Footsteps to Brilliance.
Jeff.
You just said it so well.
Your children have
incredible access to books
and they love literature.
And they're going to grow up
to be incredible readers and thinkers,
really building the tools.
So the problem is that in
the United States,
nearly half of our children
actually enter school
one,
two or three years behind where they
should be.
That's at age five.
And the reason for this is
that they don't have those
resources that your
children do that our children did.
And so the question is,
how do you remedy that?
How do you level the playing field?
And that's why we created
Footsteps to Brilliance.
We were one of the very
first companies to see
mobile technology as a way
to remedy the digital
divide and to provide
parents and their children,
even before they came to school,
with the books, songs,
and games that they needed
in order to be prepared to
succeed academically.
And the beautiful thing is
that when you give access to the books,
songs, and games that parents need,
we leverage their smartphones,
their tablets, their computers,
the children really do
enter kindergarten ready.
So it's very exciting.
We, of course,
also work in the schools
because we want to make
sure that the second benchmark,
reading proficiently at third grade,
is met.
Now,
any parent wants to make sure that
their students are educated
and well literate,
but it's really difficult
sometimes on a busy schedule.
What advice do you have for parents,
especially parents that have many,
many younger kids,
for helping to instill that
love of reading and to get
kids starting just to look
at the books and start to
figure out sounds and sound
letters together?
How can parents start down
this journey to help out their students?
Do you want me to jump in there, Eileen?
I am also a parent,
and I just think that when
we are working with our little ones,
they already have this
inspiration and wonder,
and we just want to
continue on the path of
inspiring their curiosity.
asking questions having
conversations and I think
that's one of the neat
things about the digital
programs that we put
together at footsteps to
brilliance is that we have
a lot of interactivity in
the program that draws the
parent in we also have this
really neat toggle button
that allows the parents to
go from english to spanish
because we know in a lot of
our homes that english is
not the first language and
we want to be sure that
those parents are engaged
everything in the program as
well is just available at a
touch so even parents who
might not have those
literacy skills that they
need or they don't feel
really comfortable and
literate themselves they
may not have that love of
reading themselves they can
still give it to their
child they can still
play these books along.
They can go to the Spanish side,
listen to it in Spanish,
and then read along in English as well.
And it's a really powerful
way to help parents feel
empowered by what they've
got just right there in
their back pocket.
let's talk a little bit
about students picking up
the natural language here
because we know that
there's many different
kinds of reading out there
there's reading the words
there's reading for
comprehension there's
reading to have a deeper
understanding there's
reading to be able to share
what you've known I mean
it's one of the things that
we talk about at the dinner
table here is what are you
reading tell me about the
characters what are the
characters doing meaning
and stuff like that all of
that stuff is translating
throughout their entire you
know life really but mostly
their you know their academic career
How can parents help bring
their students from simple
sounding things out through
those early stages of
actually what are you reading?
What are you understanding?
There is a huge gap right
now in people who can do
that and people who are
still trying to learn that.
What are some of the things
that teachers and parents
can do to make sure that
our students are able to
not only understand what they're saying,
but be able to spit it back at them?
Jeff,
music is one of the marvelous ways to
develop oral language.
And Footsticks to Brilliance
is infused with nursery rhymes,
both English and Spanish,
and lots of music throughout.
So children will learn their
counting through music.
This is a wonderful way to
produce knowledge.
But I have to say that one
of the podcasts that I saw
you do that I loved was
about having children tell
their own stories.
And at Footsteps to Brilliance,
we have something called Create a Book.
And this allows children,
every time they read a book,
to take all of the
characters and the
backgrounds and make a variation of it,
create their own story, if you will.
And this is so exciting that
there are now books
published and in libraries
throughout the United
States written by young
children because they've
been using the Footsteps to
Brilliance platform.
Yeah, I would just add, Jeff,
that that's kind of part of
our collective impact model.
Like we come in and we
partner with our school districts,
we partner with our communities,
and we create these
challenges that the district rolls out,
maybe over spring break,
maybe over the summer,
those times when there's a lull
And they really want to
engage with families and
not have that slide back
from all of the good
learning that's been
happening in the classroom.
And so we'll create a
writing challenge and have
families be reading the books,
writing and submitting
their writing work.
And then the district can
celebrate the amazing work
that's happening.
There are all kinds of like
Eileen was talking about.
They're publishing those
books and putting them out
in libraries and
celebrating the writing that
students are doing.
And when they have a voice,
just like you were talking about,
it really makes a difference in their,
even their motivation to be
a reader if they're an author as well.
Speaking today to Eileen and
Kathy from Footsteps to Brilliance,
you can learn more
information over at
footsteps2brilliance.com.
That's footsteps, the number two,
brilliance.com.
We're going to make sure we
have every single link over
in our show notes over at
Digital Learning Today on
teachercast.net.
Now,
if a school district is looking to
bring this program in,
generally around what grade
does that happen?
What does a school district
need to have in order for
this to be successful and
implemented in the classroom?
So we are a mission-driven company.
And so when we work with school districts,
the school districts
sponsor the children that
are in the school already.
And we actually sponsor for
free the children who are
in the community.
And this means that we can
start at birth working with parents,
showing them how to read, talk,
play with their children.
taking them up through the
foundational skills that
they need to be prepared for kindergarten,
and then going all the way
up until they're really
doing very sophisticated
critical thinking work in the sciences,
in the social sciences,
in all of the work that they need to do.
And so when a teacher is
working with the program,
what does that look like to a parent?
Sure.
So our program is really
easy for a teacher to get started.
We know that teachers right
now are really overwhelmed,
that there's a lot of
pressure happening around
the science of reading, about MTSS,
about doing data-informed instruction.
And so with Footsteps to Brilliance,
we just seamlessly align
with what the schools and
the districts are already doing.
We have pre-curated
alignments of our games and
books and activities and lessons
that align to the core
reading programs that are out there.
So a teacher would go and
look up their program and off they go.
They've got a weekly pacing
guide where students can be working on
the same skills that they're
doing in the classroom,
and then the teacher
automatically gets reports
because our games are like
formative assessment.
So whenever the students are playing,
the teachers are getting
the reports back.
Parents can be interacting
with all of that at home.
So they're getting exactly a
window into what the
teacher is teaching in the classroom,
but it's all interactive.
they don't need to know the
phonic skills they don't
need to know the sounds
even but they just make
sure that the students are
getting the time and that
they can kind of watch over
the shoulder also and
engage and ask questions
and interact with the books
and songs as well so it
sounds like the parents
really are a partner in this program
absolutely absolutely and I
think that's one of the
things that I've loved
about footsteps to
brilliance um coming on
board is that our program
also even from the
fundamentals was built for
parents um when covet came
we were okay in part
because our pro is also
built to be used with wi-fi
or without so even though
we're on mobile devices we
made a clear decision that
we needed to have equity
access for all parents and
in order to do that we have
a totally offline mode and
the teachers and the
districts still get their
data as soon as that device
connects to wi-fi again
that's pretty amazing that
you have that program that
is able to access the you
know like I said with wi-fi
or not could you give us
some examples of a school
district or a program that
you're working with that
you've had a lot of success
with and what does that look like
Oh, you know, we have,
thank you for asking that.
We have really so much success.
I want to tell you maybe two
stories that will really illustrate it.
One is the other day
superintendent Diego Ochoa
from San Mateo Foster City
podcast that he had done.
There was a family that had
moved from Brazil and they
spoke no English and their
young child ended up being
one of the top readers on
the Footsteps to Brilliance platform.
And he has a podcast where he asked the
child, you know,
why did you spend so much time?
And basically she said,
I wanted to learn English
and I learned how to speak
English on the Footsteps to
Brilliance platform in just 30 days.
So that's the kind of thing
that's really exciting.
And the parents were
learning alongside her.
In terms of actual data,
California a few years ago
gave a standardized test,
which was called the California
English language development test.
And this was done throughout California,
but in Napa County,
which was our very first client,
and they're still with us today,
the psychometricians
noticed something really unusual.
Before they could even analyze the data,
there were these outliers
that kept popping up of certain children.
And when they reversed engineered it,
They found out that the
children who on average
tested 31 points higher
than other children had
been the children who were
using footsteps to brilliance.
And that meant that they
were being reclassified
from English learners to
actual English speakers.
Wow.
That's an amazing story.
That's got to make you guys
feel pretty awesome that
this platform is helping so
many students and affecting
so many children.
Thank you.
It does.
It's why we get up every
morning and are
enthusiastic about what we do.
When we're looking ahead here,
what do you see as the
future for Footsteps to Brilliance?
What's on the horizon?
I always ask the question,
where are we going to be in
six to 12 months?
I'll let you answer that.
Where do you see all this
going in the future?
Well,
we have three things that we're
working on right now.
One is generative AI,
how that's gonna be helping teachers,
how it's gonna be
accelerating student learning.
We're really excited about
the work that we're doing in that area.
We're also doing something
that is really transformative.
We're doing a transmedia
program with San Bernardino County,
their PBS station.
And what it's going to do is
turn television from a
passive to a very active
experience for parents and
their children.
And then the even bigger
vision is democratizing
education for the entire world.
We actually have a
partnership right now with
the government of Pakistan
and Teach the World
Foundation where we're
creating micro schools that
children can come and learn English.
And the amazing thing is
that Nielsen did an
evaluation study and they
find that the children who
frankly, for one reason or another,
weren't able to afford even
$2 to get into school,
could come to these micro
schools for a couple of hours a day.
And at the end, they were actually
testing three times higher
on English than their
counterparts were in a
traditional school with
teachers and books and all
the other things that go with it.
So we're really excited
about the future of digital
learning in terms of what
it can do for the world.
That is an amazing story and
a remarkable accomplishment.
Congratulations on putting
all of that together.
I mean, those three things that you said,
those are huge hurdles to
accomplish and it's...
It's inspiring.
I got to tell you, as a parent here,
saying that there are
programs that are out there
that are going to help
students get to where that they need,
whether they are learning English,
whether they are native
English speakers trying to
learn how to read.
There's so many different things here.
And again, Footsteps to Brilliance,
it's just that program
that's going to go out
there and help out.
Tell us a little bit about what we can do.
Where do we go?
How do we reach out to you?
If somebody has a question,
where can they go?
Kathy, do you want to take that one?
Sure.
Yeah.
So we are on footsteps2brilliance.com.
So that's footsteps and the number two,
brilliance.com.
And on our website,
you can find out a lot about us.
And we also are on social media.
And you can follow us on all
of the standard platforms there as well.
We're going to make sure
that we have links to all
their social medias, to their website,
and to all the great
achievements that we've
been talking about today.
Eileen and Kathy,
thank you so much for being
on the show today.
Do me a favor.
Please invite yourself on in the future.
We would love to have you
come back and share some
more great success stories.
Thank you so much, Jeff.
It's really been a pleasure
to be with you today.
That's right.
Thanks, Jeff.
And we hope that you've
enjoyed this episode of
Digital Learning today.
Don't forget to head on over
to teachercast.net.
Check out all the great stuff.
We have our Instructional
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And if you're interested in
being on the show,
please feel free to reach
out to us at feedback at teachercast.net.
We would love to feature you
on a future podcast.
And that wraps up this
episode of Digital Learning
today on behalf of Kathy
and Eileen and everybody
here on TeacherCast.
My name is Jeff Bradbury,
reminding you guys to keep
up the great work in your
classrooms and continue
sharing your passions with your students.