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! 

Welcome back to SERP Stories, a podcast will pull back the curtain on research-practice partnerships transforming education. I’m your host, Dr. Kala Jones. Today we're taking you behind the scenes of something special - STARI Series 4, our first series specifically designed for high school. If you've been with us since episode one, you know that the story of STARI - the strategic adolescent reading intervention began two decades ago when the Boston Superintendent Tom Payzant asked for SERP’s support with a challenge: secondary students who couldn’t read their textbooks. SERP did help and since 2014, STARI has been out in the world. But the STARI story has continued to evolve and today we share the latest chapter - our expansion beyond materials primarily intended for middle school. Today, you'll hear the story of how listening to teachers, collaborating across disciplines, and staying committed to what students need led to the creation of Series 4. For this episode, I am joined by SERP’s creative director, Matt Ellinger; Sara Belicher, a Wisconsin high school teacher; and my STARI colleagues Margaret Troyer and Emily Hayden. We're going to take you through the entire journey - from recognizing the need, to creating the content and design, to seeing it come alive in real classrooms. And we'll end by discussing our hopes STARI’s future. Let's begin with the why. Margaret, let's start with the most basic question. Why do we decide to do this? Why Series 4? 

Dr. Margaret Troyer (SERP Director of Literacy Research and Development): We had heard feedback from some of our STARI users that they really wanted one intervention for grades six through twelve. You know that they didn't want to have to do one thing in middle school, and then find something else for high school. We'd also heard really resounding feedback from our users that there wasn't anything good out there for high school, that there was not a curriculum that supported high schoolers’ foundational literacy skills while also respecting their age and their developmental level and engaging them with real texts and real issues. And that's what STARI does. And so they wanted that for high school. 

Kala: But hearing from teachers is one thing. Can you tell the listeners how you concluded that the challenge was important enough to start developing a whole new series? 

Margaret: We were able to conduct a series of surveys of STARI users. And when we saw in those surveys how many people were using STARI in high school, even though we were saying it was a middle school curriculum, that's when we really knew, like, there is a need out there for this. We need to meet this need. And that's how we decided to develop Series 4 of STARI. 

Kala: Emily, once the decision was made to move forward, can you describe to the listeners how the development process got underway? 

Dr. Emily Hayden (SERP Literacy Specialist): Well, the first big challenge was finding the novels for each of our units. And so, what we did, because we knew we were going to follow the same format of three units in this in this Series 4 year. And so we had to choose the novels to focus those units around. 

Kala: And that was harder than it sounds, right? Especially once we started narrowing in on Lexile requirements. 

Emily: We wanted books that were engaging and age appropriate for high school students, but still accessible, so they had to be in that 500 to 800, 900 Lexile. 

Kala: Let's take a pause. For listeners who don't live in our world, that's roughly third to fifth grade reading level. For high schoolers. Emily, talk more about how we found books that hit that level without feeling like baby books. 

Emily: We wanted diverse authors and diverse characters. And we wanted, of course, novels that could be paired, you know, with nonfiction - so novels that, sort of, had topics and themes that lent themselves to some nonfiction work as well. They had to be - of course because STARI is very discussion-based - there needed to be things to talk about in these books, and also sort of aligned with the grade level skills and standards that students are working on in high school. And then, of course, not too long. 

Kala: Those are a lot of criteria. Can you walk the listeners through how we went about actually finding books that met all of those constraints? 

Emily: So what we did is we reached out to not only STARI users, but also people we knew, personal contacts who worked in the high school space. We hosted a couple of just drop-in chat Zooms. And so through those focus groups, we came up with a big list of possible books for STARI. So from those lists of books that we got from those to drop-in Zooms, we selected two books and we did some deeper dives with our focus groups. We invited a diverse group of teachers from across the country - so we had some teachers from New York City, some from Ohio, and some from Nebraska that participated in our deep dive into these two different books. We sent each person the book, and we had two meetings on each book to really kind of get their feedback for what ended up being Unit 1 and Unit 3. 

Kala: So we leaned heavily on focus groups - not just at the selection stage, but throughout creation - coming back to teachers again and again through pilot conversations to really pressure-test those choices and make sure the books would work for high school students. That groundwork mattered. Now let's shift to how Series 4 was built - from the content decisions to the design choices that brought it all together. 

Kala: So we discussed the need and the book selection process. It's only right that we transitioned into talking about these amazing stories. Emily, let's start with Unit 4.1 - Strength and Struggle. Tell the listeners about the books. 

Emily: The novel for Strength and Struggle is Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass. Great book written by Meg Medina, who, not too many years ago was the U.S. ambassador for youth, um, youth fiction. With a controversial title - so right away, like, this book kind of hooks kids’ interests, like, high schoolers interest, I think because it's an in-your-face kind of title. In this book, the main character, Piddy, changes high schools. She lives in Queens, changes high schools because of a move, her family's move. And right away encounters a bully, Yaqui Delgado. Piddy has no idea what drew Yaqui to hate her so much. And really, there's not really a reason, as often happens with bullying. So Piddy has to kind of navigate this new school, this bullying that kind of escalates over the course of the book and culminates in really serious attack. 

Kala: And, as a note to the listeners, one of the reasons we leaned into this book for this unit was because it handles that so realistically. Please continue, Emily. 

Emily: Piddy doesn't tell her mother right away what happened, she kind of gets quits going to school for a while. And when she goes back to school, the book handles this situation in a very realistic way. While Yaqui, the bully, is expelled at the time that Piddy and her mother finally go and talk to the school, the school cannot guarantee that Yaqui won't be back. And that's the way it works in public education, right? And so Piddy has to make the choice of, does she stay at this school where she's got this really problematic person, or does she go back to the school she was at previously? The district makes that option available to her. And that's the question that is debatable among students. You know, should she stay? Should she leave? 

Kala: And that's such a high school dilemma. You don't have full control over your life yet, but you're old enough to see the stakes clearly. Anything else you would like to add? 

Emily: There's all the normal high school stuff - the, you know, kind of normal, teenage conflicts with her mom. All of that good stuff is rolled up in here. And it's a really good read. 

Kala: Yaqui Delgado serves as a strong anchor for the unit, but in STARI, we also look at other types of text to be thematically related. Margaret, what about the nonfiction text? 

Margaret: So Emily has just told you all about how hard it was to find a novel that hits that sweet spot of being age appropriate and engaging and debatable and also accessible to students who read below grade level. And then once we finally find that novel, then we have to find some nonfiction to pair it with. The Yaqui Delgado unit - the novel's all about bullying. And we thought about finding a nonfiction text that had something to do with bullying, but we didn't really want to lean into that too hard with high school kids. 

Kala: Yeah, we definitely had to think about what will feel patronizing versus what will feel relevant. 

Margaret: So we were thinking, you know, okay, what other themes in the novel could we pursue with the nonfiction thread? And the main character, Piddy, is Latina. She is Dominican and Puerto Rican, and she's a really good student with a strong interest in STEM. So we were like, okay, maybe this is a direction we could pursue. So the nonfiction book that we ended up with is Mario and the Hole in the Sky. It is about Mario Molina, who is a Mexican chemist who discovered that aerosol sprays were making a hole in the ozone layer. Once we dove into this book, we felt like thematically, it really does relate to Yaqui Delgado and to the theme of Strength and Struggle. Because when Mario first started trying to tell the world, "We got to stop using these aerosol sprays, they're killing our planet," people did not want to hear it. They accused him of lying and making this up. And so the story is about how he persevered through that, made his case, got listened to. Eventually, the aerosol sprays have been banned and the ozone layer is actually healing. So it's an incredibly optimistic book that ends by talking about you know, we solved this problem. We can solve the other problems of climate change, which is, you know, a great message. 

Kala: And I'm going to flag something that often raises eyebrows in high school - this is a picture book, right? 

Margaret: It's a picture book. And sometimes we get a little pushback from students, and sometimes we get little pushback from teachers about reading picture books in upper grades. So why do we do that? Well, for one thing, we need our nonfiction text to be short, because we try to have our units about 40-ish days- so, you know, eight full weeks of school. And the novel takes at least half of that. And in Unit 1 in particular, we got to put in a big amount of time up front teaching the fluency routine and doing this sort of culture building and community building activities that are going to be really important to make the STARI class a safe space. So we need a short nonfiction text. And the other thing is, just because there's pictures doesn't mean the text is not complex. This is a complex topic. The sentences and the vocabulary are all high school appropriate. There's lots of scientific terms in here, like chlorofluorocarbons and diagrams of, you know, the molecules and how they're affecting the ozone layer. So there's a lot that is in here that is age appropriate and engaging for high school kids, along with the pictures that are also in there. 

Kala: And for anyone listening who's responsible for adoption or implementation: picture books and visual text are not a step down in rigor - there are different pathways to complex thinking. And that's just Unit 1. We haven't even touched Units 2 and 3 yet - we're talking labor unions, first part-time jobs, the Kent State shooting of 1970, the Vietnam War, and a nonfiction text we actually co-created exclusively for Unit 3. But in the interest of time, and giving each of these units the attention they deserve, we're going to save those for future episodes. Trust me, if you think Unit 1 selections are bold, you haven't seen anything yet. Now, after we piloted these units, we've made some changes based on teacher feedback. One of those changes was incorporating what we call a vocab catcher. Margaret, can you talk a little bit more about what teachers said? 

Margaret: So they expressed that they felt that that treatment of vocabulary was not in-depth enough to meet the needs of high school students, that high school students who are reading below grade level really need to build up their vocabularies in order to be able to comprehend the grade level text. So we decided to revamp the way STARI address vocabulary using a strategy called the vocab catcher. So in the previous version of STARI, we had an interactive vocab preview, where prior to each section of text that students read, the teacher would go over the definitions of 3 to 5 words. But they didn't record the definition, and there wasn't really an intentional revisiting of those terms throughout the course of the unit. And we know research tells us that the way that we actually learn new vocabulary words is through repeated exposures over time, ideally repeated exposures in different contexts and different forms of the word over time. So in the vocab catcher structure, we have selected 20 to 25 words in most units - so a couple of words per lesson, that the teacher is really going over in depth. So the teacher is previewing the word, discussing the word with the students, asking them where they've heard the word before, building their knowledge of the definition in context. The student is recording in the vocab catcher section of their workbook. And then when they see the word again later in the text, in a few days or a week or two weeks or three weeks, they will revisit that page in their vocab catcher and they'll say, “Okay, you know, two weeks ago we learned the word ‘flinch’, and in this chapter, Yaqui didn't flinch. Why didn't she flinch? Why is it a big deal that she didn't flinch? What does it show us about her character? That she didn't flinch?" And so students will revisit that word over and over again throughout the course of the unit, and really build their vocabularies in that way. 

Kala: We also added some letters to the teachers if you want to talk about how did that come to be and how did that evolve with the focus groups? 

Margaret: Sure. So in STARI, we deliberately choose books where the content is a little edgy. We firmly believe - it is a part of our theory of change - that it is because students are engaged by these edgy topics, because we ask them to debate these questions that are meaningful and relevant and real life and age appropriate, that is what draws them in and makes them willing to engage in the decoding, fluency and comprehension building practices that we have in the curriculum. Now, the thing about edgy content is sometimes it can create a little push back. The title of our first novel in Unit 4.1 is Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass. Now, I know for a fact that ass is not the worst word these high school kids have ever heard. However, I get it - it's a little controversial, it's a little edgy to, you know, have a bad word on the cover of a book, in your classroom. So in the letters to the teacher, which are now at the beginning of every set of teacher lesson plans for all 12 units, we explain, "Why did we choose these books?" So we say things like, "Yaqui Delgado has won the Pura Belpré Award. The author, Meg Medina, was the ambassador for young adult literature in whatever year that was." We talk about, you know, other reasons why this particular book is a great book. And then we say, "Here are some issues that this book might raise in your classroom." And we talk about some of the controversial things that come up and we say, you know, here are some ways that you might support your students in dealing with this. So when they do read about an incident of domestic violence, as a teacher, it would behoove you to be aware of whether any of your students are struggling or have struggled with domestic violence at home, so that you can be ready to support them with resources if something may be upsetting or triggering to them. It also can offer, sort of, some talking points if you get pushback from parents or other stakeholders saying, "Why would you have my kid read this book?" You know, you can say "Well, here are all the reasons why we're having your kid read this book." So we hope that that letter to the teacher can empower the teacher to smooth over any pushback that may arise in regards to some of the edgy content that we include. 

Kala: Now let's talk about the design side of things. After all, the SERP mission is to bridge research, practice, and design. Matt, as a creative director for SERP, you’ve overseen the designs of Series 1, 2 and 3, which were mainly focused on middle school. How was the design for high school series the same or different? 

Matt Ellinger (SERP Creative Director): Well, I think it's largely in the same vein. I think that, though, there are some situations where we had to be doubly sure not to become cute or cliche, because I think that students, the older they are, the more sensitive they are to that. So and then, similar to what was said before about it appearing remedial, I think that there is a dignified - the selection of topics that have gone into this - you know, labor issues and the Vietnam War - these are, really, not lightweight. These are super important. And so I think that matching that visually has been important. I think it's really important that the visual design reflect that, and that we stay away from cliched images and things that they may have a lot of fatigue around because they've seen them in younger grades, and they certainly have no interest in these sort of cutesy, you know, pastel colored images that they may be, grown sick of in reading instruction in past years. Idea of protest and the idea of military service and all these things - I think for middle school, you know, I would say that it's still very much over the horizon. But in high school, it seems like it's not so much over the horizon where there are workplace issues that they're very familiar with, either themselves or friends of theirs have been treated very unfairly in the workplace. Or they had siblings that are already in the military and they look at these images of the Vietnam soldiers who are, you know, neck deep in mud or whatever it is, and they can have this real visceral empathy for those in a way that I think supports the work of the program that is so based on students being pulled into the information and the stories that are being presented in the fiction and the nonfiction, instead of being, sort of, forced into wrestling with the concepts. 

Kala: Listeners, we did have a longer conversation about color design, if you like to hear it - stay tuned to the end of the show... But one more question for Matt here. Matt, what's your philosophy when it comes to working with the content team and getting feedback on design? 

Matt: It's all about getting the program supported through its visual representation. And it's not about trying to get, you know, your favorite font or your favorite imagery or favorite color into the program. If you are working with a graphic designer who gets their feelings hurt, fire them and get a new graphic designer, because there's just no room for that. 

Margaret: I love working with Matt because he's so open to feedback. I remember once Matt and I were talking about something on a workbook page, and he said, "I think it should be this other way." And I said, "Well, the reason why it's the way it is is because..." And he said, "Oh, well, if there's an instructional reason for that, then that trumps design." And I just really appreciate that, you know, having been an educator, that Matt brings that lens as well. 

Kala: So we've heard about how the need was identified, how the content was created, how the books were selected, and how the design came together. Now let's hear from someone who's actually using Series 4 in their classroom. I spoke with Sara Belicher, a high school teacher from Waunakee, Wisconsin who's been using Series 4 with her students. Sara, thank you so much for joining me. So describe the need for tier two interventions in the high school setting. 

Sara Belicher: This is my third year in this district. I work with a lot of EL students who are just graduating out of the real EL services. My tier two is sort of a support for their integration into the regular English classrooms. I also work with some students who have, so to speak, also kind of graduated out of the special education tier three reading services. And then I'm also again, kind of integrating them into like less support, sort of stepping them back into the regular classroom. As well as just those students who have then just were struggling readers like you have, for whatever varying reasons that are not severe enough to have been special education but don't necessarily have any one reason other than the fact that they're just struggling readers. 

Kala: So why did you feel that STARI was a good fit or is a good fit for your students? 

Sara: I was introduced to the program from our district curriculum director, the secondary curriculum director. I don't know how he found out about. He said, "Well, can you give this a try? You know, we'll buy you the materials, like, buy the books that are needed and such like that since the materials are free. We buy you materials and, just give it a try, see what you think." And he knows that I'm... He knew that I was reading specialist so that I could also have designed things on my own. But on the other hand, you know, why reinvent the wheel when someone else might have had something that was wonderful produced? And then I looked at him like, "Yeah, that looks like it's a good fit." I liked the fact that it included a lot of the basic literacy skills that students needed. I will say I'm particular... That was before the Series 4. What I was trying more of I used, I think, Series 1.1 and then 3.1 for my two different levels of students. And I like the level 4 a lot better for the high school. I think the books are better for high school students. I do appreciate that they're, I mean, that they're reading through an entire novel. I like the fluency and how those topics are connected. There's also the things that are brought in without it seeming too - it's very accessible for the high school students, doesn't feel like they're being babied or like something that they may have done when they were little. Because it is, especially with the topics that are being dealt with, they're mature topics and mature books so that they can appreciate that those are at their level. 

Kala: Okay. You are already thinking ahead because I do have a question about how your students feel about it. So you've been talking about the books. Have there been any comments that you can recall that your students mentioning about the books or about aspects of the program? 

Sara: Well, in particular, last year when I immediately jumped on board to read The Yaqui Delgado. Which was, I must say, a humorous thing when I had to ask the director, “Mike, is the title going to be an issue?” He said, “Oh good grief, no” Anyway, in particular, last year my blend of students in the level that I use that with, my sophomores, was half EL Spanish speaking and half English, and they really enjoyed the idea that there was so much Spanish in there that they felt like, like “We could be beneficial to our classmates.” It spoke to them, and it was like, from my population, we don't - in my little town in Wisconsin - we don't have the same amount of diversity, like, for example, that I've seen in the videos from STARI. We're very white, very upper middle class kind of community. And they really liked it. "Oh wow, it's talking about our culture. " It's talking about, you know, their Spanish that they could include. And the fact that it was like, "Oh my goodness. What is she doing with whom?" And like, different things that really spoke to them as high schoolers. And actually, last year when I got started the 4.2 with the book that's based from the Wisconsin author, Fifteen and Change - first of all, they thought it was cool that if somebody was from Wisconsin. But the setting of the book itself is vague. But I actually had boys that they came in, grabbed the books and wanted to start reading it out loud, poetry reading out loud, before I even could ask them to start. Really spoke a lot to that selection, that they enjoyed it. So yeah, those two units have been very successful in the materials that come with it. 

Kala: Can you share a story of a student either this year or last year, and how they were impacted by STARI series 4. 

Sara: I've seen a huge growth in their stamina of reading overall. They've all improved in their fluency, and especially this year, with my high degree of IEP students during the course, they really need that fluency work. So that's helped a lot to have things that are partnered up with the book, using the fluency and not having to create those things on my own, which is kind of nice. I mean, I would have some of the strategies, but it's nice to have those things that are connected and then leveled for them. I think I've seen the most in, yeah, in their reading stamina and the fluency. There's one student this year, I don't think he'd want to admit - he would never really tell... You wouldn't say he likes the book. He wouldn't say that he actually wants to read it. But he's the first person to always say, "Oh, good grief, I understand this. I'm going to... Why aren't you paying attention? Look, it's on the books. You know what we do every day. It's a system. Come on." And he'll hassle the other students about it. And this is a student who, over the course of this semester, now - the structure, the having a book that I think speaks to him a little bit as a person, as a student of color in our district, that it did - I think he's grown into almost like a leadership for the class. I had him last year as a freshman, and he would have never been like that. So whether it's just the growing maturity naturally, or whether it's also just having a book that he just really connects with, his kind of flipped him a little bit in his willingness to read or desire to read, even though, like I said, he would never admit that he actually like that. I don't think. 

Kala: I taught high school. They’re never going to tell you, but you'll see the signs. 

Sara: You could tell when, all of a sudden, you know, when he's talking back to his buddy and saying, "Come on, dude. I mean, how hard is this?" And it's like, wow, for someone who's really a struggling reader to then feel empowered by something, it's pretty cool. 

Kala: Have you seen an increase in percentages or proficiency with your students who are doing STARI? 

Sara: Yes, I have seen especially with fluency, and I do... I use AIMSweb as a benchmarking tool and as a progress monitoring tool for them. And have seen gains both last year, this year - Series 3 and Series 4 - have seen that they do make gains. 

Kala: That's awesome. That's awesome. So what would you say to someone who's never used STARI before and wants to use Series 4? 

Sara: The level 4 is definitely very, very good for high school level. As far as things, as far as the materials and such are definitely the best for the high school level. As long as you have a dedicated course for that intervention, that tier 2 work, it's pretty ideal. And it also probably is... it’s so - I can take it as a resource, use a lot of it, and expand from my knowledge base. But I could also guess that if, for some reason, say I needed to be gone for a while, the materials are planned well enough that you could even just have any English teacher or world language or EL teacher, someone who's like a language-based educator, could probably take the materials and it's detailed enough that they could use it. Most of my colleagues really have no idea what I do. They don't understand... "Well, what do you mean teaching reading at a high school level. What do you mean teaching reading in high school?" High school teachers don't teach reading the same way, but this would make it accessible for someone if they said, "Oh, I suddenly have to teach a reading class?" Okay, this will teach you or help you with what you need to know, and then you'll be thinking out, "Oh yeah, that's what it means to teach reading. If you were a high school person without that literacy background, it would... It could work. Probably not as well as someone with a literacy background, but it would be able to work, which is pretty good. I mean, that's something that's I would say, I definitely applaud - the research and the detailed nature of all of the notes for teachers. I mean, I must admit, I don't always look through the teachers step-by-step things as well, because I just know what to do. But if I didn't know what to do, it would be amazing. 

Kala: And the other side - a teacher who's used STARI Series 1 or 2, and they're a bit hesitant about using Series 4 with their high schoolers. What would you say to that teacher? 

Sara: I mean 4.1 and 4.2 are my favorite two units of any of the units that I saw, of any of the levels, as far as the books and the topics and such. I would say, give it - I mean, read them. Give it a try. If you're... if something about it seems hesitant - I could see some teachers if they didn't have that knowledge of language, that maybe if they previewed the Yaqui Delgado and saw the amount of Spanish was in it, they might get nervous thinking, "Oh, I already have struggling readers now you're adding in a different language to this a little bit more?" They might be hesitant. But on the other hand, well why? I mean, that's what's around us anyway in the world. So I would encourage them to give it a try and be flexible. 

Kala: And the last one in that one is what would you say to an administrator who is hesitant about, you know, having their high school teachers use Series 4? 

Sara: I would say if someone does have any hesitation because, I mean, it was sort of funny when I mentioned the title and said, "Well, it does have to do with some bullying and some abuse, and there's some things in there that are pretty mature topics." But on the other hand, it's not what students don't see on a regular basis anyway. And it is those real, real life realistic things that they encounter that makes it as accessible to the students and that you can't... I mean, I think it's really difficult for high school to find for a struggling reader things that they will be interested in. And to have found some things that the students are interested in, you have to grab at it no matter what - if one is hesitant or not. 

Kala: Is there anything that I didn't ask or that you want to share about Series 4 before we end this? 

Sara: I appreciate the fact that it is something that takes place or that references a rural setting, and the conflict between rural, like in his mind, and the character, the rural versus the urban setting and him having to adjust to that. Because my only critique with some of the previous units and the other series with that - I can totally understand where STARI is coming from, and was founded in the populations that have been that I've ever seen being examples. It's a very urban setting. It's a very diverse setting, which doesn't apply to necessarily the entire country, unfortunately. I mean, that's just kind of the way that it is. So I mean, my students, they did struggle a bit, for example, relating to Drew in Game and the idea of going around New York City, or even with Piddy a little bit with going around New York City, because those kinds of things they can totally not relate to at all. Whereas having something where, "Oh, I can relate to the idea that he's not familiar with using a bus or like a city bus or certain things" - they can really relate to. 

Kala: So we've heard about the need, about how Series 4 was created and about how it's working in Sara’s classroom. Now I want to bring it all together and look forward. I'm back with Margaret and Emily. All three of the texts and nonfiction text and novels all have like messy endings, or they're not wrapped in a little bow. I know that wasn't a top of mind when we were thinking about these books, but none of these books - novels or nonfiction texts - the stories don't end in a pretty, you know, fairy tale type of way. And what do you think about that for our first high school Series? 

Margaret: I love that, and I think that's part of what makes it age appropriate. Because life does not have fairytale endings with everything wrapped up with the bow. And I think that the ending of Yaki Delgado, where Yaqui is not kicked out of school, Piddy is the one who leaves - that could resonate with high school kids. You know, the ending of Fifteen and Change where he thought he was going to make money to get him and his mom back to Wisconsin, and his mom's like, "Actually, I'm getting married. We're staying here." You know, kids don't have the power to make those decisions. Even when their parents are making bad decisions. Kids don't have the power to make a different decision. And that may resonate with some students. So, yeah, you're right, I, I love it that you pointed that out because we didn't choose the books intentionally with that in mind, but I do think that's part of what makes them age appropriate. 

Kala: I can just add to that, as a former high school teacher, the messy endings students relate to a lot more. Oftentimes, their life isn’t fairy tale. Everything doesn't end up perfect for them in the end and it all works out and everything, you know. I think that resonates with high schoolers a little bit more about like - this is real life. Sometimes you don't get your way, but you know, you learn from it somehow. 

Margaret: So I remember talking with a STARI teacher about some of the topics that we have kids read about, like I think in particular, it was, a kid who's being raised by an older sibling, rather than a parent or some other things like, you know, families struggling financially to get by or kids in foster care. And she was saying, you know, "There are kids in my class who are dealing with these issues and they feel like they're the only one. So then when they read about it and they're like, 'Oh, here is someone else dealing with this. It's not just me. It's not something that's wrong with me or something that I did wrong. This is a universal problem. I'm not the only one.'" And that that just makes them feel, you know, seen and supported in a way that a happy ending tied up with a bow might not resonate in quite the same way. 

Kala: What are your hopes, goals? What do you see the future for Series 4 and STARI beyond? 

Emily: Well, despite our best efforts, there are a lot of students in high school years in high school spaces that are still really working on developing these, not only foundational reading skills, but sort of the critical comprehension skills that that we all know they need, regardless of whether they go to college or straight into the world of work when they finish. And I also think that the publishing community is doing a much better job in recent years on putting out books that sort of fit the profile we're looking for with STARI - so engaging topics for older students, but still accessible in that accessible Lexile range. So I think there's more and more material out there, and a growing awareness that there are more kids that need this kind of intervention. Series 4 shows what's possible when researchers, designers and teachers collaborate to meet a real need in the field - creating literacy interventions that high school students actually want to engage in, that build skills while building confidence, and that show students they're not alone in their struggles. This is the work we're committed to at SERP - creating tools that support both students and teachers, that are grounded in research but shaped by practice, and they meet students where they are while respecting who they are. Before we sign off, I ask every guest this season one question. How did you learn to read? Here's a snippet of Sara’s story. 

Sara: My parents read to me out loud every single night. I never went to bed without a bedtime story, especially from my dad, who was amazing at reading stories. And then I just... I grew up with two parents that read a lot in the home, and I was a library kid, so I was an early reader. 

Kala: I will extend a special thank you to Margaret, Emily, Matt, and Sara for sharing their stories of Series 4 with us today. And thank you to all of our listeners for joining us on this journey behind the scenes of STARI. 

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 school's most pressing challenges. Explore our work at SERPinstitute.org. 

Kala: And now back to Matt Ellinger, SERP’s Creative Director - Let's talk about color for a moment. Your intentionality with this series - and all others - is evident down to the color chosen. Each series has a corresponding color, and the color for Series 4 is purple. What was your thought process with that? 

Matt: So there are lots of things you have to - I mean, this is partly an organizational decision and trying to keep the materials sensible to people who are becoming oriented with the different series. But also the, sort of, majesty of the purple is pretty, I don't know, significant. And I think that when I offered the team a selection of a number of colors and they picked the purple - they were all colors that work with the other colors, on a color wheel - but it has like, a "no kidding around" feel to it, which I think is great for high school. With the other series, we have been very conservative, and it's less conservative in a sense. So in a way, I think that that works for high school, too. 

Kala: I never thought so intentionally about a color before Matt, so I thank you for letting the STARI team and our listeners get a little peek into how your mind works. Let's talk about the unit covers - how did you come up with the ideas for these? 

Matt: The covers for STARI units are always an interesting challenge. So basically I get a synopsis of the book from Margaret, and she will often talk about the reasons why the book was selected. But it's important that you don't just do an on-the-nose match with just the novel, or the primary book for the unit, because they're many different components. So they're all these different topics, and fluency, and they're these other books that are also part of the unit. So you have to make sure that it is very relevant. But it's not just a match. It's not an illustration of the book or some companion to just the main book. With the night sky - that's a beautiful image that we found that we used - the person looking up at the night sky with possibilities. And something about, you know, the the night will come to an end, but you can, you will be able to get past this - the very optimistic picture but still very much in the dark right now. And I think that that's a very apt image for 9th grade, 10th grade. 

Margaret: So the first draft of the Strength and Struggle cover, is the young woman with her fist up in the air. And when I saw it, I said to Matt, "Well, this shows strength, but not struggle.." So then he changed it to this image, which it currently is, of a young woman up on a mountaintop, with her arms up in the air. So that really shows the strength and the struggle. You know, she had to struggle to get there, and now she's displaying the strength that it took, to persevere through that struggle. 

Kala: And the covers for units 4.2 and 4.3 are equally as thoughtful; each one capturing something essential about the themes and the era those themes explore. But again, we’ll save the deep dive on those or when we talk about their book selections in a future episode. The design choices made collaboratively by Matt and our STARI team really do complement what's inside.