March 24, 2026
Every Child Can Read
“Every child can read.” Mary from Hoke County Schools says it plainly, and then she shows the work behind making it real. We’re recording live from the NCRA conference, where she explains how a district literacy committee approaches professional learning like a mission: attend strategically, take excellent notes, then debrief as a team so the best ideas don’t stay in a notebook they show up in classrooms.
Website: spotlight4success.com
00:06 - Welcome From The NCRA Conference
00:26 - Why Mary Attends And Takes Notes
00:52 - Finding Her Path As A Coach
01:37 - Defining Success And Next Focus
02:26 - Four Pillars For Literacy Improvement
03:35 - Walkthrough Data Wins And Celebration
WEBVTT
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Welcome to American Book Company Spotlight for Success.
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My name is Danielle, your host, and today we are at the NCRA conference.
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Our special guest today, Mary, joined us from Hoke County Schools, and she's just gonna give us a little rundown as to what brings her to NCRA today.
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Hi, nice to be here.
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Just being that lifelong learner, wanting to attend as many sessions as possible.
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So we have a district literacy committee, and um I brought some of the members with me.
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We're all attending as many sessions as we can, dividing and conquering, taking excellent notes, and then we're going to kind of debrief as a team to figure out how we can get the learning from here back into our district and transfer it into practice.
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Awesome.
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And what got you started in your current role as a K-5 ELA reading specialist?
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Um that's a trick question.
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I originally was not interested in this position at all because of what I thought it was.
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Um and when I was sent on the interview panel for this position as one of the people listening to the candidates, um, the team just kind of got into a discussion of what we wanted in the role.
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And as the team talked about coaching and building capacity and being in schools, I was like, you know, that sounds like something I actually would love to do.
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And we didn't find our fit that day, and so I applied and here I am trying to build capacity and improve student outcomes in my county.
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I love that.
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And what does success look like to your district?
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That every child can read.
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Quote that.
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Um let me think.
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What uh what are you looking forward to in your session specifically?
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Um we're kind of looking at um everything aligned with science of reading, but I think we're getting in a really good place this year with having those heart and mind shifts to embrace you know multiple standards coming out of rich, complex text.
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And so the next thing um is writing.
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How do we embed vocabulary writing to where we're able to communicate our ideas?
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Is there anything else you want to share with the NCRA community before we close out?
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I do.
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Um I just wanted to tell about some initiatives we have and the success.
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So there's four big pillars, I guess.
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The first one is communication, um, being able to clearly communicate what we expect and um what things will look like in the success and how it's gonna be measured.
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The second component of that is support.
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I never I don't believe that any teacher shows up to work being like, I'm not gonna do a great job today.
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Um a lot of times it's just because more support is needed.
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And then the next thing is monitoring.
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You know, we have to monitor what we're implementing so that we can have that continuous cycle of improvement, and then that takes us right back around to the communication and going through it again.
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So, with that, um you know the focus is always 3-5.
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How can we get the scores in 3-5?
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And it's never gonna happen if we don't get children to read K2.
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And so being able to produce readers so that by the time we get in those upper grades that they're actually reading to learn.
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Um, and with that, we've done those things, communicated, we've supported, we've done the monitoring and repeated the cycle for continuous improvement.
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And I just wanted to share some of the stats from that.
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From beginning of year to middle of year progress based on walkthrough data.
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Um, following the lesson structure and excuse me, following the lesson structure, internalizing the script for the program we use, which is Reading Horizons, increased from 21% to 82%.
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Just BOY to MOI.
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Additionally, um providing feedback and support because we know when students have that opportunity to practice that they need to receive that timely feedback, increased from 40% to 86%.
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Having posters available for the student and teacher to reference during the lesson increased from 36% to 40%, and then using kinesthetics, manipulatives, hand motions to engage the students increased from 36% to 67%, and being able to project their lessons so that the students have the visual increased from 69% to 91%.
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So I'm extremely proud of all of the work that our instructional leadership teams have done to buy in, and then all the work that the teachers have done.
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So we made a video, it's on YouTube for Hope County Schools reading Horizons Week.
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Um, but I'm just so proud of the work we're doing, and it's amazing to see the teachers teaching and children learning.
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I I'm so happy that your district is being successful with increasing their scores.
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That's amazing to hear.
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And thank you so much for joining us on our podcast, and I hope you have a great rest of your conference.
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Thank you.
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