Dr. Kala Jones (Host, SERP Literacy Specialist): Hey SERP Stories listeners, we have some amazing news that we can finally share. We're going to Austin! Get ready for a special podcast episode we're recording live at SXSW EDU in Austin, Texas, this March 9-12. If you want to join us in person, SXSW EDU is offering all of our listeners a $50 off discount code to attend the conference and the festival. Use coupon code SXSWEDUPOD in the cart at checkout. You can email info@sxswedu.com with any questions. See you there! Okay, now on to Episode 4: The Readers STARI didn’t give up on. Belonging. Confidence. Academic agency.

Adjani: STARI has helped me to become a better reader. And I know this how? Because I'm starting to read more often. I'm not a reader, I don't like to read, but I'm starting to read more often by myself, starting to learn new words, building my vocabulary, expanding my knowledge of reading. Julianna: I don't have to be forced to read. I don't have to be told to read. I just go on my own and read ‘cause I want to, not just ‘cause I need to.

Kala: This is what STARI students have told us... and we couldn't be happier. Welcome back to SERP Stories, a podcast where we pull back the curtain on research-practice partnerships transforming education. I’m your host, Dr. Kala Jones. Today we're talking about what happens when struggling readers don't just learn the mechanics of reading — but find reasons to believe in reading itself.

Before we dive in, I need to tell you something personal. For years, I taught AP students–AP Seminar, AP Research, AP Psychology–those types of classes. My students were motivated, engaged, racing through chapters, debating themes, writing sophisticated essays and papers. I loved that work. But I was in a bubble. Down the hall, my teacher friends would come to lunch exhausted, frustrated even. They’d say things like, “My students aren't invested. They don't care about reading. I can't get them to engage.” And honestly? I didn't really understand what they meant. My students were so motivated. What was the problem? Then one day, I walked into a reading classroom. And I saw it. Rows of students, high schoolers sitting at computers. Clicking through programs with short passages written at elementary levels. Texts about topics that had nothing to do with their lives. No discussion. No connection. Just isolated skills, divorced from meaning, divorced from anything that mattered. And I watched these students — fifteen, sixteen years old — shut down. Heads on desks. Eyes glazed. Some trying to look busy while doing nothing. Others openly defiant, refusing to even read the stories about ducks. That's when it hit me. These weren’t unmotivated students. These were students who had been given materials that insulted their intelligence. Materials that said: you're broken, you need baby work, you're not capable of real reading.

I've seen it in my own family too. My niece struggled with reading in elementary school. By third grade, she’d stopped volunteering to read aloud. She'd avoid books. Not because she couldn't decode the words, but because reading had become this thing that exposed her, that made her feel less than. And here's what really broke my heart: She's so smart. Curious. Full of ideas. But reading had become a barrier between her and everything she wanted to learn. Often when students struggle with reading, if they're offered an intervention at all, they're given activities that match their skills – activities targeting foundational reading skills in isolation. From there, they can just read, right?

I spoke to Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings, one of the nation's leading voices of equity in education, the scholar who coined the term “culturally relevant pedagogy”, and one of my personal role models. She contextualized this a bit more by using a math example.

Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings: And that's the challenge, I think, that teachers have. They're going to do discrete skills linked to what? I often do talk to math people. I'm not a math person. And I put three plus four equals question mark. And I said, what does this mean? And of course, people telling me, it’s seven. I said, no, I didn't ask you to solve the equation. What does it mean? So then they go on and give me all of these, you know, highfalutin. Well, three units plus four units will yield seven units. And I said, I'm six years old when I first encountered this. I don't know what a unit is. So then someone says like, if you had three oranges and four apples, I said, there's no such things as apple-oranges, right? Do I have seven apple-oranges? That doesn't exist. Oh, no, you would, you know, you think of it as fruit or produce. I'm six years old. I said, what if it's three snakes and four mice? What do I have? Maybe I just have three snakes because the snakes are gonna eat the mice up. If one of them snakes is bigger than the rest of the snakes, maybe all I had is one snake. Six. I'm six. I need a context. Three plus four equals question mark. It doesn't mean anything.

Kala: I got her point: we can teach all the phonics patterns in the world. We can drill fluency until students can read 150 words per minute. But if students don't believe they're readers— if they don't see meaning in what they're reading, if they don't feel competent and connected, if the materials insult rather than inspire them — the skills alone just won't be enough. So today, I want to share three shifts that occur when students aren't merely taught to read, but given a reason to believe in reading Three themes that aren't necessarily explicit within the lesson plans, but are essential threads throughout the curriculum. Three transformations that are hard to measure and do research on — but that we now understand are essential to why STARI works. These aren’t the metrics that earned STARI its ESSA Tier 1 rating. But they’re the heartbeat beneath every data point, the reason struggling readers become the invested readers who choose to keep reading. The first theme we'll discuss today is belonging. When students find themselves in the stories we give them, something shifts. Reading stops being an assignment and becomes an act of recognition — a moment when the page looks back and says, “I see you”. That's belonging. It's not about lowering the bar or simplifying the text. It's about raising students’ sense of purpose and connection. Because when the story feels real, the learning becomes real, too. Let's hear from middle school teachers Tynesha Banks and Cheri McKenzie:

Tynesha Banks: One of the challenges that I faced teaching adolescents, is trying to match or pair their levels with their interests. Sometimes, especially with our low-level readers, their interests don't necessarily match up with books that align to their level. And so students get bored, students feel like the text is too easy, it's babyish. They may be embarrassed by how small the book may look.

Cheri McKenzie: I think it's important to understand how necessary the program is for middle school. Middle school students still want to read the good stuff, they're just having a hard time accessing it. And this program, really, really, nailed that. It helped them to read the actual really good books, but on their own pace and with the extra scaffolding that they need.

Kala: There it is. The problem and the solution. Students aren't unmotivated– they're insulted by materials that don't match their intellectual maturity. They want “the good stuff,” as Ms. McKenzie says. They want books that matter, stories that challenged them, ideas worth discussing. They just need access. They need scaffolding that respects where they are, while honoring who they are. That’s what separates STARI from so many other interventions. It doesn’t dumb down the content. It builds up the support. Here’s Ms. Banks again:

Ms. Banks: I enjoy STARI a lot, especially because I feel like the material really connects to our students. And we also heard this from another STARI teacher, Sonia Kendall:

Sonia Kendall: Last year we read The Skin I’m In and most kids can identify with the main character and issues that she faced. This year we read Ninth Ward, and it was real to them because we were able to show them videos of what actually happened in New Orleans. And then the main character was someone around their age group, and so they could identify with it. And now we're reading the Game, and most boys love that book because they like to play basketball. Let's pause for a moment. Because here's what happens when students like A.J. encounter a book like Game that reflects their lives:

A.J.: Basically, it's this young guy and it's, like, really hard in his neighborhood. And I could reflect to that and actually base that off of my life, because he's interested in basketball and I am too. And he’s just trying to make something out of it, you know what I'm saying? Even though he doesn't have as much people to bring him up, so he’s just trying to put his talent to work and try to make something of it. And I could just relate it to my life.

Kala: “I could just relate it to my life.” That recognition– that moment of “this book sees me”– it's powerful stuff. And it's not accidental. It's intentional. When Ms. Banks says the material “connects to our students,” this is what she means. Not just interests. Connection. Recognition. The feeling that your story matters enough to be told in a book. From the beginning, Dr. Lowry Hemphill, who you may remember from earlier episodes, and the SERP team, knew that text selection mattered. Not just for reading level, but for relevance. For representation. Lowry, tell us more about how you initially thought about text selection connected to engagement.

Dr. Lowry Hemphill: From the beginning, we worked with this idea that what was going to engage kids was cognitively challenging texts. We felt that there were all these kind of little fires that you could light inside kids that would motivate their skill development. If the skill development was in the service of engaging with really complex and really intriguing ideas.

Kala: Complex ideas, yes. But also: mirrors. Windows. Doors. Books where students could see themselves, books where they can see into others lives. Books that opened up new possibilities. And Linda Diamond—whose organization, CORE Learning, supports schools in implementing research-based literacy practices—had this to say about STARI:

Linda Diamond: What excited me about it was the content was motivating for these kids who were struggling with reading. The kind of text that these students will benefit from will be texts that in some cases are somewhat controversial or stimulate discussion. And the text I saw in STARI stimulated conversation. They were interesting. They were topics that the students would engage with.

Kala: With her extensive experience in curriculum development, what excited Linda was that engaging students in relatable, discussable texts didn’t come at a cost to students’ learning reading skills. The efficiency of the STARI design ensures that basic reading skills are not a casualty of student engagement; they are a close companion. Here's a teacher — Elma Rahman — describing what changed when her students encountered STARI's texts:

Elma Rahman: My experience teaching STARI has been very different from, like, how I've taught previously when it came to reading. Part of the the change for me has been just really letting students own what they're doing on their own, rather than me telling them how to do it. Using the STARI curriculum has impacted their reading in the way that they are reading for a purpose. And I've seen the growth and when they have a purpose for their reading they're able to articulate their thoughts later in a discussion very differently than if it's just "What did you read about? And what did you think?" It goes beyond that.

Kala: Reading with the purpose. That's what Ms. Rahman is describing. And here's what it looks like from a student's perspective: Izamar: My favorite thing is when we actually talk with our partners about something like, we're confused with in the book, so we understand it better. When students understand why they’re reading– not just to complete an assignment, but to grapple with ideas, to work through confusion with the partner, to form opinions, to discuss and debate— everything changes. They take ownership. They articulate their thinking. The engagement becomes real, because the reading matters. And when you pair that sense of purpose with text where students can see themselves? That's when belonging becomes transformative. Here’s Dr. Ladson-Billings again.

Dr. Ladson-Billings: There's nothing new about the notion of prior knowledge. Psychologists say that's how we learn. You don't learn things in isolation and in bits. They don't stick. We have to connect them to something, and we typically connect them to things that we already know. What's challenging, I think, for many of our students, is that they are in classrooms with people who don't know their experience. So they have trouble connecting them with things that they already know.

Kala: Students engage more deeply when the curriculum reflects their identities, their experiences, their communities. But it's not just about engagement. It's about validation. It's about telling students: your life matters. Your story matters. You belong here. Reading isn't just a cognitive skill. It's a social practice. It's how we make sense of the world and our place in it. And that's what belonging looks like in STARI classrooms: not just students learning to read, but students seeing themselves as readers. Not just completing assignments, but connecting to stories. Not just building skills, but building identity. Because when you belong, you lean in. You take risks. You start to believe. This brings us to our second shift: confidence. And confidence? It's a little complicated. There are two challenges here. First, these students have experienced a lot of failure— years of being told, directly or indirectly, that they're not good at reading. Second, to rebuild their confidence, they need to experience real success— actual, measurable progress that helps them believe in themselves again. STARI was designed for both. By middle school, many struggling readers have internalized the message that they’re not good at this. They've been corrected, criticized, and compared. They've watched other students fly through books while they stumble over sentences. Somewhere along the way, they stopped trying— because trying meant failing, and failing meant feeling stupid. My colleague Emily Hayden, a fellow STARI literacy specialist like myself— spent years as a classroom teacher, administrator, and college professor— puts it this way:

Emily Hayden: I think they need to see the value of being able to read and make meaning for themselves. And they need to see that they can do that because I think especially once kids get to middle school, they've had a lot of years, six years maybe, of believing and maybe even being told that they're not good at this, that they can't read, they're not good at reading, and they internalized that. So they need to see why we teach kids to read. And they need to believe that they can do that and can do that successfully.

Kala: Here’s how one teacher, Angie Lewis, describes that reality:

Angie Lewis: My biggest challenge in implementing the STARI curriculum was dealing with students who are reluctant to read. Some students don't have the confidence level yet to be able to turn and discuss the text with their partner. They might think that the idea is silly or that the answer is wrong.

Kala: Dr. Hemphill saw this same pattern years ago in Boston classrooms.

Dr. Lowry Hemphill: One thing that I saw was teachers would actually read a lot of the books out loud to the kids, because the kids couldn't access the books independently. In general, what we saw was large numbers of kids just plain checked out.

Kala: This is the cost of repeated failure: disengagement. Students who stop believing they can succeed stop trying at all. To rebuild confidence, students need evidence — experience of success. STARI was designed with this in mind. It includes passages written at four fluency levels, each aligned to the larger unit topic, so that every student begins where they can succeed and can see themselves progress. Katrina Poston, another STARI teacher, shares her point of view on students doing fluency:

Katrina Poston: The fluency routine helps the kids in a couple of ways. So, it definitely helps with their confidence, given that they are assigned passages at their level. So they're more confident knowing that, oh, I'm not going to have problems reading this, I can definitely read this out loud to someone and know that I'm not going to mess up, or it's okay if I mess up, because my partner is going to encourage me and we're going to work through this. I've had a ton of kids move from one level to the next over the course of a unit. They can't wait to move up because their courage and their comfort with reading has increased so much. I think that’s probably the biggest piece is them just being confident with reading.

Kala: Ms. Poston is right— confidence comes from knowing you can do it. But here's the thing: students also need to see their progress over time. That's where the progress tracking comes in. Ms. Banks saw this working with her students.

Tynesha Banks: I feel that my students feel that they're growing as readers as far as fluent readers and understanding. They are able to track their fluency throughout the weeks and hopefully seeing growth. And I think they really like that because they sometimes, you know, you have these reading programs that the students don't see their growth. And I think that's one of the coolest things about STARI is that they're seeing their growth and they're seeing their progress as they're going along. They write their words per minute every single time that they're doing their fluency, so they have that information available to them.

Kala: Confidence is built through repetition, through success, through seeing tangible progress. STARI’s structure creates a feedback loop: practice, improvement, recognition. Students begin to change their internal narrative—from I can’t to I am improving.

Kala: Miss Lewis, what are your favorite aspects of STARI? Angie Lewis: What I love about STARI is that there are built in scaffolds that allow different levels of readers to access the text.

Kala: And Ms. Banks agrees. Tynesha, What did it look like in your classroom?

Tynesha Banks: I have a lot of students who aren't able to read a entire book. And so in STARI, we're able to do that together so they feel success in that, like, “I actually read this entire book” and, you know, “I understood, you know, what was going on and I was able to finish it."

Kala: That feeling—I actually read this entire book—is transformative.

Kala: And Ms. Poston, what does the intentional design of STARI support your students to achieve?

Katrina Poston: When they can access the text and when they can read the text, they're more willing to participate in the discussions without feeling like, “Oh, I couldn't read this, so I'm going to be left behind. I'm just going to sit here and not say anything." And so knowing they can access the text makes it easier for them to participate in the discussions, too.

Kala: But in true SERP fashion, we didn’t just ask adults for feedback. We also got input from the students. Back to one of our STARI students, Izamar:

Izamar: It makes me more confident to actually speak up and actually talk about something in the book, rather than just staying quiet and not really understanding. Which is evidence for school leaders like Principal Kamala Carnes that STARI is a worthy investment:

Kamala Carnes: It starts them where they are, and then they begin to build, and they see success as they go through, which I think has been a powerful piece for us at my school.

Kala: That’s the turning point—when a student stops seeing themselves as someone who struggles with reading and start seeing themselves as a reader. Confidence in reading becomes confidence in learning. Because confidence isn't just about skill— it’s about identity, agency, and the belief that you can grow. Confidence isn't built overnight. It’s built moment by moment — in the small victories that rewrite a student's story about themselves. When a student who once said “I can’t” finally says “I did,” that changes more than their reading score. It change their sense of self. Confidence is the bridge between belonging and becoming— between seeing yourself in a story and believing you can write your own.

Kala: Belonging gives students a place. Confidence gives them a voice. And once they have that voice, they start to use it — to question, to analyze, to stand by their ideas. That's the heart of academic agency— our third theme — when students move beyond doing the work to owning their thinking. Let's start with evidence— because agency leaves a trail. The data tells a story not just of progress, but of persistence, of students showing up, leaning in, and taking charge of their growth. Here's Principal Carnes again:

Kamala Carnes: The data that we've recently been able to review has shown that kids have moved four to five grade levels in STARI. just in the small amount of time that we have been able to implement the program. One girl, in particular—I remember started off at kindergarten level— I think she's now close to third grade level. So that's significant.

Kala: These are students who had been stuck, who had been falling further and further behind. And in less than a year, they're making gains that seem impossible. These aren't just test score gains; they're signs of momentum. Students who once avoided reading, now track their own progress, push themselves to new levels, and show what happens when motivation meets structure. The academic outcomes of STARI are well documented. Students in the first randomized controlled trial gained a full year of reading growth beyond their peers— many of whom were in other literacy interventions; that's growth in decoding fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. And in the second study, conducted in Jackson, Mississippi, during the 2021-2022 school year— probably one of the most challenging school years in recent history— STARI students grew at twice the expected rate for middle schoolers. Their growth exceeded the estimated learning loss for Covid-related school closures.

Margaret Troyer: We were able to get a statistically significant effect on the Mississippi State ELA test for our students in Jackson. And that's actually a really big deal, because most intervention research, particularly focusing on adolescents, does not show an impact on state standardized tests.

Kala: Test scores matter. Fluency rates matter. Grade-level equivalencies matter. But here's what matters even more: what students do with those skills.

Dr. Lowry Hemphill: A lot of the STARI teachers would say, the STARI kids are the ones who are prepared. The STARI kids are the ones who do the reading. The STARI kids are the ones with their hands up for class discussion. And they say, “and I see the skills getting transferred”. And that's a really important part of really what we're trying to get with the program. It's not just about improving your reading scores. It's about, you know, all these other attributes that make you a successful student.

Kala: "It's not just about improving your reading scores." It's about how those skills change students’ daily experience of school, how those skills open doors— or how the lack of them closes doors permanently. Lowry calls this the transfer effect— when students begin to apply what they’ve learned independently, taking responsibility for their thinking and performance across subjects. That's academic agency in action. Linda Diamond has worked with countless school systems on adolescent literacy.

Linda Diamond: The fact that we have kids in the middle schools and high schools who are still struggling with basic literacy is a major problem in our system. It's a pipeline to the juvenile court system, to prison, and it's immeasurable harm on children and their families if we don't provide support to these students.

Kala: What Linda names here — that immeasurable harm — is real. She understands the stakes in the most personal way possible. Her younger brother struggled with reading throughout his life. By high school, the challenges had become overwhelming. He ultimately took his own life. She told me:

Linda Diamond: He is my why. He is why I do what I do. He's why I started CORE. And he's why I want to stop so many other kids from going that route, which is not uncommon for struggling older kids.

Kala: Linda reminds us that the stakes of literacy are life-defining. Agency isn't abstract— it’s what keeps students connected to school, to opportunity, and to hope. That loss became her purpose. It drove her to found CORE Learning, an organization that partners with schools and districts to implement evidence-based literacy instruction. Her brother is why she travels the country training teachers, evaluating programs, and advocating for older struggling readers. She’s determined to stop other kids from going “that route,” as she puts it.

Kala: In my own research, I've written about a phenomenon I call school-specific slow violence: the gradual, often invisible harm done to students when schools fail to provide effective literacy instruction. It's a form of violence precisely because it's quiet and persistent. Each year a student falls further behind in reading is another year of lost access— to content, to opportunity to their own future. And Lowry saw this firsthand during the STARI clinical trial.

Dr. Lowry Hemphill: When Jimmy Kim and I did the clinical trial of STARI, half the control group kids had disappeared. So these were kids who were struggling readers who were not assigned to STARI. And they just stop coming to school by May. And the reason they stopped coming to school is because they failed all their major subjects for two or three marking periods. And they knew there was no way they could pass.

Kala: That’s what slow violence looks like — he harm accumulates quietly, year after year, when students can’t access grade-level text. Agency is the antidote to that slow violence. When students gain the tools, the confidence and the support to act— to participate, to persist— they resist being defined by their limits. When students are given the right tools, texts, and community, they change the trajectory. Isn't that right, Lowry?

Dr. Lowry Hemphill: The reason kids are coming to school who are in the STARI program it was because they could see themselves getting better. They were conscious that their reading skills were improving. And also they were experiencing — and the teachers tell us as too — they were experiencing more success in their other classes.

Kala: And attendance isn’t just compliance — it’s commitment. Students came to school because they were experiencing success. They stayed because they could see the impact of their effort. They showed up because STARI gave them a reason to hope. And here’s what Principal Carnes observed: Kamala Carnes: The kids are totally engaged the entire 35-40 minutes that they are together. They are actively participating. They are excited. They don't get up and leave the room. They don't ask to go to the bathroom. They're not off task. Everybody wants to be there and is excited to get in there and get to the next piece.

Kala: Everybody wants to be there. That's not language we're used to hearing about reading intervention classes. But here's what it sounds like from a student's perspective. This is Nelsy:

Nelsy: When I was younger, they gave me some questions that I don't understand at all. And that makes me like, oh, what am I doing in this? I actually read at home now because the STARI program actually makes reading books more fun. Because the questions are really, like, I understand. And the book is like, amazing, I love reading the books!

Kala: “I actually read at home now." That academic agency in motion— choosing to engage not because someone told her to, but because she now sees herself as capable and curious. From confusion and frustration to comprehension and joy. From "what am I doing?" to "I love reading the book." This is what I call academic justice. When we close reading gaps, we don't just improve literacy outcomes. We open doors. We create pathways. We give students access to curriculum, to college, to careers— to futures they couldn't imagine before. What we see with STARI students is consistent with my own research. When that quiet denial of opportunity — class after class, day after day, year after year gets — gets reversed, when students are actually given the tools, the texts they need, they don't just catch up academically. They reclaim their identities as learners. They reclaim their sense of agency, and they rewrite the narrative that's been written for them— that they're not readers. Dr. Ladson-Billings frames it in terms of our democratic project:

Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings: Why we do what we do is really a part of the larger democratic project. If you think of democracy as perhaps the most liberating form of governing, then literacy is the key to preserving full democracy. Learning to read is not just about developing the skill, but it is a sense of empowerment that we are able to seek liberation through our ability to be literate.

Kala: Students need explicit instruction — yes. They need systematic practice — absolutely. But they also need reasons to care. They need texts that speak to them. They need classrooms where their voice matters. They need evidence that they're growing. And they need to believe that reading is something they can do. STARI does all of that. It builds skills through explicit instruction in phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. It builds motivation through engaging, culturally relevant texts. And it builds community through collaborative discussion and peer support. Here's what Ariadna Phillips-Santos, another STARI teacher, observed:

Ariadna Phillips-Santos: In my student group you have English language learners, you have students with IEPs, and you have students that have just been low-performing or plateauing in their reading skills. And I think that having that holistic approach to developing their reading skills, including the discussion components, really makes a big difference in some of their growth. Their confidence in being able to speak up about what their reasoning is and what their thinking is— those are things that in sixth grade, I would see them be very quiet and shy away from those kind of discussions. Now with STARI, because it's so normalized to them, they're putting themselves out there a lot more, and I think that that also is what builds their skills.

Kala: Putting themselves out there. Taking risks. Speaking up. And that shift doesn't stay contained to the STARI classroom. Principal Kamala Carnes saw it spreading across her school:

Kamala Carnes : It shows such promise that the kids are going to be able to use an intervention program that is geared towards them, that they're confident that they can do it, and they're seeing the results because they're doing well in their other classes.

Kala: "Geared towards them." That phrase is important. When students begin initiating discussions, taking intellectual risk in applying their reading strategies across subjects — that's agency. That's when we see the work of belonging and confidence come to life. That's the transfer we're looking for. Not just reading better in STARI, but succeeding in science, in history, in math. Not just test scores, but a new relationship with learning. Not just improved fluency, but empowered learning. Not just catching up, but taking the lead. Academic agency is what happens when students feel seen, believe in themselves and act on that belief. It's the difference between being taught and taking ownership— between having potential and using it. Academic outcomes aren't separate from belonging and confidence. They're the result of belonging and confidence. When students feel seen, when they believe in themselves, when they're given the tools and support they need — that's when learning happens. Agency isn't the end of the story — it's the beginning of a new one. Because once students take ownership of their learning, everything else becomes possible.

So what have we learned? If we want students to read, we have to care about how they feel about reading. It's a simple equation, really: skill and motivation are inseparable. You can't have one without the other — not sustainably, not for students who've been struggling for years. STARI shows what's possible when we honor both. When we pair explicit instruction with texts that matter. When we build classrooms where students voices are heard, their stories are valued, and their growth is visible.

Jasmine: STARI has helped me become a better reader because talking with others and hearing the opinions of others can help me learn more about what I'm reading about.

Kala: Belonging. Confidence. Academic agency. As I said in the beginning of this episode, these three themes might not be the measures that got us as ESSA Tier 1 evidence of effectiveness, but they're the forces behind every data point. Because when students believe their readers, when they see themselves in the books they read, when they experience success day after day — transformation follows. That's when they start reading to learn in science class. That's when they pick up the history textbook without fear. That's when literacy becomes not just the skill they're practicing, but a tool they're using in school and beyond. STARI isn't just an intervention. It's an invitation — for students who've been left behind to step forward. To see themselves as capable, competent, and confident readers, to take ownership of their learning and to claim their place in the classroom, in the curriculum, and in their own futures.

Kamala Carnes: You gonna have an intervention program that teaches them how to work through language, everything's about reading novels and analyzing text. And if you can't do that, you're not going to be successful as a learner. And some kids didn't get the foundation that they should have gotten early on. And this is a way to do it and keep the children whole.

Kala: I think about those students I saw in that intervention class years ago — heads on desks, eyes glazed, shut down by the materials that insulted the intelligence. I think about my niece in third grade, who stopped raising her hand. And I think about what becomes possible when we give students what they deserve: Not baby books, but challenge. Not pity, but respect. Not isolation, but community. That's what STARI does. And that's a gift worth giving.

If you missed our early episodes, go back and hear the full story of STARI's creation and its journey to scale. And if this episode resonates with you, share it with someone who works with adolescent readers. Because every student deserves to feel like a reader — not just in first grade, but in sixth, seventh, eighth, and beyond. Because when students belong, they believe. When they believe, they act. And when they act, they change what's possible — for themselves and for all of us.

Before we go, I asked every guest this season one question: How did you learn to read? Given the context of this episode, I consider it an honor to share the story of one of my academic inspirations — Dr. Gloria Ladson Billings.

Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings: Wonderful question, and I will tell you, I don't remember a lot about learning to read. I know I did not go to school reading. And I think I learned to read back then the method was called the sight word method. You know, it's funny because people tout phonics, but many of us who were prolific readers in the 50s, in the 60s, we had those old Dick and Jane Basel books, and we just had the same words over and over and over. Look, Dick, look or run, spot, run. And we just kept saying them until we kind of got it. So I think that's, one aspect of my learning to read. I think the second aspect of my learning to read is that my mother and father were both readers. I just always saw them reading, and we had a lot of books in the house. The interesting thing about my mother is she did not believe in book censorship. So my brother and I were permitted to read whatever we wanted to read. Somewhere around my teenage years, early adolescence, I just became a fan of what could only be described as trash, right? So, I was like, the biggest Harold Robbins fan in the world. Reading these books, and I thought I was reading them, and I thought, you know, what I liked is that I was grown up enough to be able to read them. My mother didn't say I couldn't read them. My friends, on the other hand, were not permitted to read books like this. And so in order for them to read the books, we had to cover the book with brown paper bag covers so they could read them. And so one of the things that happens, this is very interesting, because I just shared this story a couple weeks ago. I did an interview, an in-person interview with LeVar Burton. And so, we were talking about learning to read, and I shared the story with him that I had read this book by Harold Robbins called 79 Park Avenue. And someone in the 70s, I think, turned it into a mini series. And so I'm watching the mini series, and I get a phone call from my friend that I used to share my salacious books with. I had not seen or heard from her in 15 years. Phone rings, I picked up the phone and I hear a voice on the other end that says, "Are you looking at this?" And I go, "Well, yeah." And she said, "Did you know this is what this was about when we were reading this?" And I said, no. And she said, me neither. And just hung up. And that was it, you know. So, I just, you know, I, I've had so many adventures as a reader. And I think what really prompted my willingness to read was, that I didn't really have restrictions. I could read what I wanted to read.

Kala: Thanks for listening to this episode of SERP Stories. If you want to learn more about STARI, visit serpinstitute.org/STARI. And if you believe like we do, that middle school readers deserve better, share this episode, leave us a review, and follow along as we bring more research with purpose to the mic. I'm Dr. Kala Jones. See you next time! SERP Stories is produced by the SERP Institute, where educators, researchers, and designers come together to tackle schools' most pressing challenges. Explore our work at SERPinstitute.org.