March 23, 2026
When Kids Can Read But Still Don’t Get It
Fluency isn’t the finish line. If you’ve ever watched a student read smoothly and still walk away confused, this conversation puts words to the problem and points toward practical next steps. We are joined by two educators from JT Barber Elementary School in the Craven School District: Deja Moore and Michaela Shy. They share their paths into teaching, why they love working with kids, and what it looks like to keep growing as professionals when the needs in reading feel urgent and school-wide.
Website: spotlight4success.com
00:00 - Welcome From The NCRA Floor
00:40 - Why They Chose Teaching
01:53 - Becoming An A+ Arts School
02:24 - What They Need For Reading
03:32 - Using American Book Company Tools
05:06 - Takeaways And Conference Sendoff
WEBVTT
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Welcome to Spotlight for Success by American Book Company.
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I am Devin Pentosi, your host.
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We are here at the wonderful location here in Winston, Salem, North Carolina, at the NCRA conference.
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And we are so happy to be here with our special guests.
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We have Deja Moore.
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Good morning.
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Welcome, Deja.
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Good morning.
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And we also have with us uh Michaela Skye.
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Good morning.
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Nice to see you here, Michaela.
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All right.
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So uh these two wonderful ladies join us from JT Barber Elementary School.
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Um and they're over here from uh Craven School District.
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Yes, sir.
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All right, wonderful.
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So uh tell us a little bit, uh Deja.
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We'll start with you uh about your journey.
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What got you into teaching?
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Okay, so I originally went to school for psychology.
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Um I started long-term subbing at JT Barber for two years.
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Um, and then I was uh given the position to teach the full-time teacher role in the classroom.
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Wonderful.
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Um so I love kids.
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I've always worked with kids.
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I used to work at daycares for uh a many of years with the younger kids, and then I kind of just worked my way up to elementary, and I love fifth grade.
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So I've been there for three years to love fifth grade.
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Oh, that is great to hear.
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And uh how about you, Michaela?
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Um, well, I did go to school for psychology as well, but my mom's a teacher.
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Um, my aunt's a teacher, and it kind of just runs in the family.
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Um, and I loved school growing up, so I always admired my teachers as well.
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So I kinda just always knew I loved, I wanted to teach.
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Oh wow, that's wonderful.
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Yeah.
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Um, I understand your school has received a special award, is that right?
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Yes.
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Can you tell us about that?
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Which award?
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Which which award?
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Oh, oh, okay.
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Yes, the A Plus, I guess.
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You mentioned A plus to me.
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So we're now an art integrated school, so in our lessons, um, we use the arts, we use arts, music, uh theater, dance to incorporate um our curriculum and just to get the kids to grow on a different level.
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Oh, that's wonderful.
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And uh Michaela, are is there another award that uh the school has received?
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Um the class?
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No, I mean nothing I can think of right at this moment.
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Oh, okay.
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All right, and and you all are here at NCRA.
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Oh, yeah.
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Can you tell us a bit, uh Deja, starting with you, can you tell us a bit about what brings you here or what you're hoping to get out of this conference?
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Well, I'm hoping to get some um some good interventions, okay?
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Um, some new curriculums to use with our kids.
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Uh, we've been having a little trouble with our reading school-wide or in our district in general.
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So we're just trying to get some tools to take back to our district and in our classrooms.
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Okay, wonderful.
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That's good.
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Good to hear.
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And Michaela, how about you?
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Really the same thing.
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I'm looking a little bit more for um comprehension.
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Um, we're finding that students can read very well, but they're not understanding what they're reading.
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And that's common worldwide.
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Um, so hopefully finding some different strategies um to bring back to my kids because I know how to read and I know how to comprehend, but sometimes teaching that can be a little difficult.
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Yes.
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Um, yeah, for the most part, just tools to take back to the school and share with our other teachers, other co-workers as well.
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Okay.
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So that's school-wide, we can benefit from the conference, even though there's only three of us here.
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That's great, that's great.
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And uh so Deja, tell us a bit about I understand that uh you've used American book company materials from your classroom.
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I've been using them with intervention.
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I've been using them um during our assessments.
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Okay.
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Um, I've been using them to correlate with the standards that we're working on.
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I love that you can they have the drop-down of all the standards and you literally can just pull the information from them.
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I love how they have like lessons up there.
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I just love it all around.
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I love it all around.
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Oh, that's wonderful, Deja.
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And it breaks it down very well.
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It does in student language.
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Yes.
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And I love how they also can do it themselves on their iPads too.
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We don't have to like stand up to the front and do the instruction ourselves, they can do it themselves as well.
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Oh, that's wonderful.
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Yep, I love that.
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Oh, that's great.
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Um, and uh so uh let me ask you so using the American Book Up and your materials, um uh Deja, did you see score improvements using the using the books online?
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Wonderful.
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Yes, that's great.
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And how about you, Michaela?
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Oh yeah, the kids are understanding what they're reading a lot more.
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Okay, just the exposure from ABC is helping them a lot.
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Oh, that's fantastic.
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I also like to add, too, um, the vocabulary has been our biggest thing, too.
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I love how they have like the prefixes and suffixes.
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I love it.
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I love it.
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Oh, that's great.
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Well, I'm happy to hear it's working well with your students in the classroom on the EOGs, and uh it's been very successful for you.
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That's great.
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Thank you.
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All right, I understand someone has brought you here.
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She's on the phone.
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She's on the phone right now.
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Oh, okay.
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All right, I understand.
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Okay.
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Well, um, all right.
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Well, um uh thank you so much for uh joining us today.
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Do you have anything, uh Deja, uh anything you'd like to share with the NCRA community?
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Um, thank you for the invitation.
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I'm delighted to be here.
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I'm hoping that I have some tools to take back to our school with us in our county.
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Yes.
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That's great.
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And Michaela, thank you so much for having us.
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I can't wait to take the tools back and see what we learned during this trip.
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Yay!
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All right.
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Well, Deja and Michaela, thank you for joining us so much today.
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I hope you have a great conference, and uh we look forward to hearing from you next year.
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Thank you.
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JT Barber
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