Podcast: Beth Anderson on Learner Differences

We’re listening to the Getting Smart podcast. Where we unpack what is new and innovative in education. I’m your host Jessica and today we’re talking learner differences with Beth Anderson. Beth leads the Hill Center, an innovative approach to meeting the needs of students with learner differences.

In today’s episode, Emily talks with Beth about their approach, what’s working, and what she hopes to see in the future when it comes to working with these learners. Let’s dive in. Hi Beth, welcome to the Getting Smart podcast. Can you introduce yourself and just tell us a little bit about the Hill Center and why

you do what you do there? Absolutely. Thanks so much. I’m happy to be on the podcast. And yes, my name is Beth Anderson and I’m the executive director at Hill Learning Center.

And Hill Learning Center is a K-12 non-profit based in Durham, North Carolina. Our mission is to transform students with learning differences and the competent independent learners. And we do that through a variety of programs. We have programs for students, including a school year program, summer programs, individual

and small group tutoring. All for students with learning challenges and sort of families across the triangle area here in North Carolina. All of our student programs are research based and really distinguished by being highly differentiated, direct small group instruction and reading, writing math and executive function.

And beyond our students, we also offer a range of programs for professional development program speakers for teachers and parents and educators. And working close partnership with school districts and nonprofits to bring Hill methods that we’ve developed over the last 44 years within our school and our walls. And also other research based practices to more struggling learners across North Carolina

and beyond. We reach about a thousand students per year directly and have trained more than 1200 teachers last year and our methodologies in use in about seven states, primarily in the southeast. Wonderful. So tell me a little bit more just starting with brass tacks.

How would you define learning differences? And if then you could also elaborate on how differentiation in your space looks similar to what you see in K-12 schools and how it looks different? Yeah, great. So learning differences basically are neurologically based differences in how individuals process

information, right? How they receive, process, recall and communicate all the different information that is coming in to all of us all the time. And they may be diagnosed or undiagnosed specific learning disabilities. Most people have heard of dyslexia, which is a reading disability.

Also can have dyscalculia, math disability, dysgraphia and writing. As well as other processing challenges that often impact learning, things such as ADHD and attention deficit, sensory processing disorders, executive function challenges. There’s about an estimated one in five individuals have a diagnosed or undiagnosed learning difference and that has a pretty profound impact on students.

Students with LD are sadly three times more likely to drop out of school and about two times more likely to be jobless as an adult. And to your question about differentiation, you know, differentiation is the holy grail of every educator, right? It’s what every classroom is trying to do and looking for, I think, where we take and

folks who are really trying to serve students with learning differences to the next level is really individualizing that differentiated instruction. So when you engage with a Hill Learning Center student program, you know, it’s generally in a four to one student ratio. And we have strategies and techniques and a methodology that we’ve developed over the

last four decades where we really pinpoint specifically what are the gaps that each individual student has in their foundational skills in reading, writing and math. And then we build there. Yeah. Do you see that this space then we personalized learning and more individualized

instructions certainly is the direction that a lot of schools are taking for obvious reasons and for good reasons. Do you find that a lot of the research based strategies and practices you’re using you think would work well for all learners, whether or not they come to school settings with learning specific learning differences?

Yeah, I think there are certainly those generalized practices and that’s actually where we’re evolving more in a lot of our teacher training and development is that it was interesting as we work with school districts, particularly in reading and that’s what we have done the most training and support and exporting of our methodology and we train their interventionists and their literacy specialists and their exceptional children’s teachers and they say,

but wait, we want all of our classrooms teachers to understand these strategies because this is just good direct explicit instruction that teachers need to learn how to use. And so while the very specific four to one methodology does require that four to one kind of individualized for the students who really need that level of differentiated instruction, that’s not as transferable, but the strategies and the techniques that are used are what we

are increasingly training general classroom and tier two and tier one instruction as well. Excellent. And I’m also curious, because you’re so focused on serving this particular group of students, which often do not receive the services that they deserve and need in a traditional public school setting. And you’re just really an experts in this space. What are some of the ways you’re innovating or trying new things and really pushing the boundaries when it comes to

working with these learners? Yeah. So our biggest innovation in the last few years has actually been incorporating technology into our methodology. So and starting with our reading methodology, our reading methodology again has been proven it’s copyrighted. And we’ve been using it for many years and it was a notebook that’s about 900 pages thick of all of the content and curriculum and algorithms and teachers would literally manually, you know, because it’s so individualized, it’s a

very data driven program, but they had to have, you know, worksheets and charts and graphs that they were hinting doing in the classroom with each student to move them systematically through this program. So a few years ago, we started working with a software developer and basically took all of the both content, the word list and curriculum comprehension text, all of those pieces, as well as the algorithms for a mastery based approach and put them on the technology. And so

now we are delivering that via iPads where you’ve got a teacher who has an iPad and then for students who each have an iPad as well, they’re connected wirelessly via the web. And the teacher has all of the students data for all those students. So you’re right there at her fingertips, the students critically have their own data right there in front of them as well. And they are more engaged than they ever were because they’re also digital natives, right? It’s iPads, they love the technology,

but they also are seeing the data that was hidden to them before. They always got the color in their grass and they knew if they mastered, but they see, they see their progress. And for students with learning differences, that’s even more important because we’re breaking this down into bite size chunks. These are kids who are used to failing, right? They don’t end up in our programs if they are being successful in school. And they start seeing progress from day one because again,

with the technology and the program together and a skilled teacher delivering it, you can really pinpoint that and move them through a systematic progression. Do you think that some of that’s attributable to the mastery based approach? And are you thinking about it in terms of different competencies that the learners are working towards and on? Yes, I mean mastery based learning is what we’re driving towards because particularly for kids who do have diagnosed learning disabilities,

they need to master the rules on the concept or else it’s not going to stick and they’re going to continue having challenges with the basics of reading and decoding. But what you’re hinting at is what I kind of talked about is sort of the magic of HillRap and what we hear from parents and seeing students and hear from our teachers and teachers who are out in public schools working with students as well is that they see their own progress, right? They start experiencing success.

They know what their goals are. They know every week that they have to master their words three days in a row, then three Mondays in a row, and then it goes on review, right? So they know what their goal is when they’re doing a fluency time test and exactly how many words they have to get right three days in a row to master that list and they feel ownership of it and we know it through that impediment and such through they I’ve seen our students who are generally the quiet ones who

would be hiding in the corner of the classroom actually like correct a teacher if they make a mistake in the methodology, right? Or you know they also want to be able to think that because it is so individualized they support each other, right? And so they celebrate when the kids in their classes make progress or hit their goals or master a list or master their next you know beat the time on their next time test. So it’s mostly anecdotal evidence. We want to do more analysis of the qualitative

impact on that but we see it and we hear it and that’s why parents come to Hill and like teachers enjoy using Hill outside of here as well is that growth that the students see and feel. It’s not just on a piece of paper, it’s not just a number and an assessment, it’s their own learning. Have you seen that then learners have more agency over what they’re learning both at Hill and then also in their mainstream classroom setting?

So that’s definitely the philosophy behind our approach and again we see it and we do see it anecdotally for sure. And particularly the students who attend our school it’s not just the mastery based level of the program it’s also the intentional strategies and the reinforcement that teachers are doing and this is part of the teacher professional development throughout. So we are building in to the program and the methodology helping them improve their educator function

skills, helping them better understand what it means to self-advocate. Actually our whole philosophy, we are a half-day school so it’s a unique model should come to us for three hours a day and spend the other half of their day in another public, private, district, charter, home, just another educational environment and the idea behind that is that they are taking the skills they have learned at Hill and taking it back into the classroom. So we help them also explicitly

understand who they are as a learner, what strategies work best for them, what accommodations they may need so they can go advocate for themselves in other contexts. Yeah and you just mentioned something who helped you understand who they are as a learner. I’m really curious what some of the PD looks like and how your educators and facilitators are working to know learners well, of course know what they’re bringing in terms of their learning difference but also just who they are,

who they want to be and how they learn and I’m really curious what are some of those things you do, strategies you use and I know that all teachers really could seek the benefit from that. Yeah I mean again it’s a great question and something we’re trying to actually be more intentional about capturing and codifying and also kind of sharing with others because I think a lot of it has happened naturally honestly within Hill when you’re in such a small environment

where you have four students and one teacher they do intentionally build time into the Hill as you say a lot of it is a social learning strategy right to get to know to build that relationship with the student. Just to go back to the technology this is one reason why we actually really don’t want to put our we’re using tablets and not laptops or Chromebooks because putting that screen out puts a barrier and puts distance between the teacher and the student but if they have a tablet

our teachers if you see them in a classroom if you watch in the classroom they are constantly leaning over right engaging with the students looking at what they are doing there’s you know it’s not only getting to know them it’s also it’s that proximity so those are just some of the even classroom types of strategies that we that we emphasize in supporting our methodology and that respect you know I think helping them understand who they are as learners our teachers they will

test different things right so some kids and this is even with all the like adaptive technology and assistive technology and things that are out there right they will try different strategies and so if you’re trying to help a kid who is really struggling to get organized and you try a graphic organizer but that just doesn’t work for a lot of kids right so you then you know try a different you’ll try a phone because they all do carry phones right try different but trying you know I think

a lot of it and a lot of what in our executive function trainings we emphasize with both parents and teachers is don’t be afraid to try different strategies and to have different tools in your toolkit and we do give you you know and here are some different tools you can use some kids we do encourage kids to use audiobooks right and to use the audios when they can but to actually read along while they’re listening so different things like that can just help meet and recognize

that not every learner is going to absorb the content in the same way their connective strategies there are a lot of different little strategies that you can use I don’t know if I answered their left turn but absolutely and I just think that in the unique setting that you’re in that hill we have the opportunity to go deeper with each student and right that’s not always the case and so you just some of those learned strategies are are really helpful I’m also curious I know there’s

probably a lot of learners some you may know of who don’t have access to hill or you’d love to have access to hill um yeah so tell me more about that and what you’re doing to try and create more access create more of opportunity for learners to be in spaces like hill yeah um thank you for that question I mean that question is really speaks to what brought me to hill five years ago is seeing that we had just sort of what I call the hidden gem here in Durham that is doing great work but

it’s always going to have limits to what students can access this and so last year our board actually adopted a new vision statement that all students with learning differences in attention challenges received the instruction and support they need regardless of where they attend school or whether they have a diagnosis and those last two modifiers were especially intentional and important right because they’re both indicators and barriers to access we know that where you attend school

often dictate a lot of your educational outcomes and I’m not talking about you know public versus private but just where you are within the public school system as well and whether or not you have a formal diagnosis can be a real barrier to accessing services as well you know it’s interesting I just a new study came out this year there’s always been historical concerns about overrepresentation of students of color in special education and the theory behind it was that teachers were eager to

refer black students especially and get them out of mainstream classrooms and referring them to special ed was a way to do that but the new research that came out this year that I was particularly interested in because it was especially focused on the south which is where we do most of our work says that actually black students are 45 less likely than white students to be identified as having special learning learning needs even when you control for income and academic achievement

so the white peers were academically similar to them are giving services and identification that they’re not giving so I think you know this but I’m just putting in your contact your your question in a little bit more context this is a real priority for us and a driver and so what we’re doing in this area and we’ve got a lot of learning and growth to do for sure but we are partnering with others in the field to make a much more intentional effort to reach more students who

are furthest from opportunity. Yeah sure I think too and as a former Durham public school teacher I often found myself wanting the data and information sooner not just through the identification process but just the time spent with that learner to get to know them and figure out exactly what it what it was that was going on and so I really appreciate what you all are doing because it not only is providing strategies and support and systems for those learners but doing it

quicker right you know every day that those learners at school are not really feeling fulfilled and that their needs are met is the day where I feel we have some missed opportunities so the sooner we can get to whatever it is they need whether it’s attending to a learning difference or not I think um yeah the the healthy are our our future will be and the healthier educational ecosystems will be so I appreciate that a lot um just one last question I have in addition to you

sharing anything else you um think is relevant to the space the innovation space and education but really curious what your hopes and dreams are for um these learners and the families that you’re that you’re working with I’m always thinking about what’s next and um curious what what you really see see coming or what you’d like to see yeah I mean so a couple of things you know just speaking about the learners themselves right and this is just my hopes and dreams for them as

individuals right that they actually recognize appreciate and celebrate their own brilliance and that they do learn how to advocate for themselves to educate others and the channel their unique brains right and talents to all of the different kinds of creative and entrepreneurial endeavors they may choose to pursue um and that they don’t ever again feel stupid or bullied just because they think and learn differently which is what is sadly the reality for so many of the

students with learning differences out there today you know my ultimate hope is that we don’t need help right that you said that students don’t actually need to attend school or access services at specialized centers like a learning center but that their needs actually are met in any educational context that they encounter I think there’s a lot of work to be done for that to happen and I think actually you mentioned the families too you know parent I think

some of the great opportunity for more innovation and just more leadership and more more leading change is amongst parents and students themselves right and parents have learned a lot of the charge most of the policies and practices at the federal level the state level and in the virtual schools it’s parents advocating for their kids who has who have paved the way to getting services and accommodations and such um but I think I just hope that there’s more and more of a

broader cross cross section of parents and students who are advocating for um and engaged in this work because I think that’s part of what it’s going to take um to really get to a world where we recognize that every single classroom in this country and every single teacher has students with learning differences in it and they need to be prepared and equipped to meet the needs of all of the diverse learners in front of them I couldn’t agree more um you have a wealth of

resources on your site do you mind pointing our audience to where we can find out more about Hill and access some of those resources yeah so you can tell him hill at www.hillcenter.org we have a lot of videos and resources particularly about our reading methodology but on there I also would encourage you can find our community education series which is a free series open to the public here locally but we also whenever the speakers will allow us we live stream live stream as well

we had Laderick Horn here last week speaking of this kind of student advocacy he’s a phenomenal adult with learning disabilities who was here and gave a just phenomenal series a session working with talking to student parents and educators and those are free and available and then we have a wealth of teacher training and workshop information on our website as well excellent well thank you so much for your time and for the work that you do thank you so much I appreciate it a big thanks to Beth

for taking time to talk with us for today’s episode we appreciate the work her team is doing to support learners for more on all things innovations and learning be sure to check out our blog at gettingsmart.com and before you go leave us a rating and a review it helps us get better and it helps more people find us that’s it for today listeners thanks for tuning in for the getting smart podcast this is Jessica signing off