Emily Hanford

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Emily Hanford is an American education reporter who hosted the APM Reports podcast Sold a Story. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel called her "the most prominent figure in advocacy for big changes in reading instruction." [1]

Contents

Early life and education

Hanford grew up in Brookline, Massachusetts and graduated from Brookline High School. She attended Amherst College but became disillusioned with the experience, taking a two-year leave in 1991 before she returned to complete her B.A. [2]

Career

After graduating from Amherst, she worked as a reporter for WBEZ Chicago. [3]

Since 2008, Hanford has reported for American Public Media, where she is a senior correspondent and producer and has focused on early childhood education. [4] In 2016, she began reporting on the prevalence of remedial education for college students, leading to an interest in dyslexia supports. [1] [5]

Her 2022 podcast Sold a Story investigated allegations that the popular early-intervention literacy strategies developed by Marie Clay and promoted by Lucy Calkins are incompatible with educational and cognitive research. It argues that the cueing method of teaching reading ignores the importance of phonics. [6] The podcast was widely influential in the national movement to reform reading instruction and reached more than 3.5 million downloads. [7] [8]

Hanford's work was cited during the consideration of a New Hampshire bill to revise the state's reading curriculum. [9]

In April 2023, she received an award from the George W. Bush Presidential Center. [10] Hanford covered Bush's work on literacy in Sold a Story. [11]

Personal life

Hanford is married and lives in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. [1] [3]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Literacy</span> Ability to read and write

Literacy in its broadest sense describes "particular ways of thinking about and doing reading and writing" with the purpose of understanding or expressing thoughts or ideas in written form in some specific context of use. In other words, humans in literate societies have sets of practices for producing and consuming writing, and they also have beliefs about these practices. Reading, in this view, is always reading something for some purpose; writing is always writing something for someone for some purpose. Beliefs about reading, writing and their value for society and for the individual always influence the ways literacy is taught, learned, and practiced.

Whole language is a philosophy of reading and a discredited educational method originally developed for teaching literacy in English to young children. The method became a major model for education in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and the UK in the 1980s and 1990s, despite there being no scientific support for the method's effectiveness. It is based on the premise that learning to read English comes naturally to humans, especially young children, in the same way that learning to speak develops naturally.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phonics</span> Method of teaching reading and writing

Phonics is a method for teaching reading and writing to beginners. To use phonics is to teach the relationship between the sounds of the spoken language (phonemes), and the letters (graphemes) or groups of letters or syllables of the written language. Phonics is also known as the alphabetic principle or the alphabetic code. It can be used with any writing system that is alphabetic, such as that of English, Russian, and most other languages. Phonics is also sometimes used as part of the process of teaching Chinese people to read and write Chinese characters, which are not alphabetic, using pinyin, which is.

Reading Recovery is a discredited short-term intervention approach designed for English speaking children aged five or six, who are the lowest achieving in literacy after their first year of school. For instance, a child who is unable to read the simplest of books or write their own name, after a year in school, would be appropriate for a referral to a Reading Recovery program. The intervention involves intensive one-to-one lessons for 30 minutes a day with a teacher trained in the Reading Recovery method, for between 12 and 20 weeks.

American Public Media (APM) is an American company that produces and distributes public radio programs in the United States, the second largest company of its type after NPR. Its non-profit parent, American Public Media Group, also owns and operates radio stations in Minnesota and California. Its station brands include Minnesota Public Radio and Southern California Public Radio. Based in St. Paul, Minnesota, APM is best known for distribution of the national financial news program Marketplace.

The National Reading Panel (NRP) was a United States government body. Formed in 1997 at the request of Congress, it was a national panel with the stated aim of assessing the effectiveness of different approaches used to teach children to read.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Synthetic phonics</span> Teaching reading by blending and segmenting the sounds of the letters

Synthetic phonics, also known as blended phonics or inductive phonics, is a method of teaching English reading which first teaches the letter sounds and then builds up to blending these sounds together to achieve full pronunciation of whole words.

Guided reading is "small-group reading instruction designed to provide differentiated teaching that supports students in developing reading proficiency". The small group model allows students to be taught in a way that is intended to be more focused on their specific needs, accelerating their progress.

Adolescent literacy refers to the ability of adolescents to read and write. Adolescence is a period of rapid psychological and neurological development, during which children develop morally, cognitively, and socially. All of these three types of development have influence—to varying degrees—on the development of literacy skills.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marie Clay</span> New Zealand academic, educator, researcher (1926–2007)

Dame Marie Mildred Clay was a researcher from New Zealand known for her work in educational literacy. She was committed to the idea that children who struggle to learn to read and write can be helped with early intervention. A clinical psychologist, she developed the Reading Recovery intervention, a whole language programme in New Zealand, and expanded it worldwide.

Balanced literacy is a theory of teaching reading and writing the English language that arose in the 1990s and has a variety of interpretations. For some, balanced literacy strikes a balance between whole language and phonics and puts an end to the so called reading wars. Others say balanced literacy, in practice, usually means the whole language approach to reading.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reading</span> Taking in the meaning of letters or symbols

Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of letters, symbols, etc., especially by sight or touch.

Jeanne Sternlicht Chall, a Harvard Graduate School of Education psychologist, writer, and literacy researcher for over 50 years, believed in the importance of direct, systematic instruction in reading in spite of other reading trends throughout her career.

Renee Hobbs is an American scholar and educator who works in the field of media literacy education. She is Professor of Communication Studies at the Harrington School of Communication and Media,University of Rhode Island and founder of the Media Education Lab.

Patricia A. Edwards, a member of the Reading Hall of Fame, is a Distinguished Professor of Language and Literacy in the Department of Teacher Education and a Senior University Outreach Fellow at Michigan State University. She is a nationally and internationally recognized expert in parent involvement, home-school-community partnerships, and multicultural, early, and family/intergenerational literacy with a focus on poor and minority children. She served on the International Literacy Association Board of Directors from 1998–2001, as the first African American President of the Literacy Research Association from 2006–2007, and as President of the International Literacy Association from 2010–2011. Edwards also served as a member of the Board of Directors for the American Educational Research Association's (AERA) Family, School, and Community Partnerships Special Interest Group (SIG) from 2014–2016 and was elected to serve as its President-Elect/President from 2016–2020.

Teachers College Reading and Writing Project was founded and directed by Lucy Calkins, The Robinson Professor of Children's Literature at Teachers College, Columbia University. Its mission was to help young people become avid and skilled readers, writers, and inquirers through research, curriculum development, and in-school professional development. TCRWP developed methods and tools for the teaching of reading and writing through research, curriculum development published through Heinemann, and professional development with teachers and school leaders. TCRWP supported the Reading Workshop and Writers Workshop approaches through its Units of Study curriculum. The project involved thousands of schools and teachers in New York and around the country in an ongoing, multi-faceted in-service community of practitioners engaged in the application and continual refinement of approaches to helping children become effective writers and readers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Madeleine Baran</span> American investigative journalist

Madeleine Baran is an American investigative journalist. She is best known as the lead reporter for the APM podcast In the Dark. She has received accolades including three Peabody Awards, a Gracie Award and two Sigma Delta Chi Awards for her reporting.

Annemarie Sullivan Palincsar is a scholar of education known for her research on literacy instruction, reciprocal teaching, and cognitive apprenticeships. Her involvement in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Research Council on the Prevention of Reading Difficulty in Young Children, the National Research Council's Panel on Teacher Preparation, and the International Literacy Association's Literacy Research Panel, attests to her dedication to advancing educational research and improving teacher training. Palincsar is the Ann L. Brown Distinguished University Professor Emerita at the Marsal Family School of Education at the University of Michigan.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Borsuk, Alan J. "Reading expert Emily Hanford says simply buying new curriculum won't fix what's wrong with reading instruction". Milwaukee Journal Sentinel . Retrieved 2023-12-06.
  2. ↑ Hanford, Emily. "Why I Quit College, and How I Went Back". American Public Media. Retrieved 2023-12-06.
  3. 1 2 "EMILY HANFORD, DEREK GOLDMAN". Chicago Tribune. 1998-11-19. Retrieved 2023-12-06.
  4. ↑ Mechelke, Meg (2023-06-06). "Reporting on Reading With Emily Hanford". Iowa Reading Research Center. University of Iowa . Retrieved 2023-12-06.
  5. ↑ Harrison, Rick (2023-05-12). "How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong: Emily Hanford Visits ISPS to Discuss the Science and Politics of Reading Instruction". Institution for Social and Policy Studies. Yale University . Retrieved 2023-12-06.
  6. ↑ Hill, Kim (2023-07-01). "Emily Hanford: are we teaching reading all wrong?". Radio New Zealand . Retrieved 2023-12-06.
  7. ↑ Davis, Angela; Maja, Beckstrom (2023-05-10). "How an APM podcast became part of a national movement to reform reading instruction". MPR News. Retrieved 2023-12-06.
  8. ↑ Kristof, Nicholas (2023-02-11). "Opinion | Two-Thirds of Kids Struggle to Read, and We Know How to Fix It". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2023-12-06.
  9. ↑ "What's behind the effort to change how kids read in New Hampshire". New Hampshire Public Radio. 2023-02-01. Retrieved 2023-12-06.
  10. ↑ "Forum on Leadership 2023 Speakers". George W. Bush Presidential Center. Retrieved 2023-12-06.
  11. ↑ Hanford, Emily (2022-10-27). "In the battle over reading instruction, a U.S. president faces off against influential authors". The Hechinger Report. Retrieved 2023-12-06.
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