Oklahoma Edition: How Small Town Schools Foster Strong Literacy Communities

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
This is The Literacy Mindset Podcast, where education leaders discuss identifying and removing phonological barriers with MindPlay's CEO, Jeff Pendleton.

**Jeff Pendleton** (0:13)
Okay, everyone, welcome back. I am excited to have another episode today on The Literacy Mindset of our Oklahoma series. I miss Joanna Hall here, who is the principal at Bennett Elementary School in Broken Bow Public Schools. Welcome to the show.

**Joanna Hall** (0:30)
Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

**Jeff Pendleton** (0:32)
Well, we're excited to have you. I love talking about and talking with administrators across the state. We really try to cover it, and now we get the southeast corner of the state, which is I think probably the most beautiful part of the state. I don't know how people would argue against that, but we're excited to have that conversation.
Let's see.

**Joanna Hall** (0:59)
I think it's the most beautiful, but I'm partial.

**Jeff Pendleton** (1:01)
Yeah, I understand. Well, why don't you tell us a little bit about your background? Obviously, you spent a lot of time in Broken Bow on that, but what led to where you're at today?

**Joanna Hall** (1:13)
I did grow up here. I went to school here. I'm now the principal where I attended elementary.

**Jeff Pendleton** (1:20)
Amazing.

**Joanna Hall** (1:22)
I did work away for a few years. I started out in deaf education. I worked with deaf and hearing-impaired kids, and then I came back to Broken Bow, and I worked with high school students with mild-moderate disabilities, and I taught algebra. And loved it, loved my high school kids. But as part of that, they asked me to start taking over special ed directing.
And the further into my career I got, the more I discovered I enjoyed working with the adults, because as you work with adults, you can really make a larger impact. Right. Because you change the way an adult works with someone, a teacher, then you change the lives of 30 kids every year for their career. Right. I love that. Yeah. So that's the reason why I stepped over to the dark side of administration. And it's okay. You know, we have cookies over here to give people. It's all great.

**Jeff Pendleton** (2:20)
There's always a sugar piece offering to be made.

**Joanna Hall** (2:23)
Yes.

**Jeff Pendleton** (2:24)
Okay. I like that. Let's see. Tell us a little bit about your building and Broken Bowl Public Schools in general.

**Joanna Hall** (2:32)
We are down here in the southeast corner.
We are very isolated, which is a blessing in a lot of ways. The nearest city of any size is Dallas and Oklahoma City and Little Rock, which range between three to four hour drive. Okay. Texture Cana is mid-sized city. It's still an hour and a half away. So like I said, we are very insulated here. It is still very community oriented. It is still very family oriented and very supportive. If someone has a tragedy, there is a taco dinner being served where you pay in silent auctions. I mean, it is such a great place to be. And if you break down on the side of the road, it's not if somebody will stop, it's how many.

**Jeff Pendleton** (3:21)
That's awesome. Love hearing that. Okay. So we've got about 1500 or so kids in the district. Your building is a third, fourth and fifth grade building, correct?

**Joanna Hall** (3:32)
Yes. Best ages.

**Jeff Pendleton** (3:33)
Yeah. The right in-between-ish perfect nest there. About how many kids do you have in the building?

**Joanna Hall** (3:40)
About 300

**Jeff Pendleton** (3:41)
About 300 Okay. So let's dive in and let's talk a little bit about literacy. So walk us through what a core block is and how you guys think about that. You kind of mentioned how you're structuring your literacy block. So maybe you can give us some guidance on that.

**Joanna Hall** (4:03)
We have two different programs. I'll talk about our core program first. We keep honored our 90 minutes. The first part of the 90 minutes is whole group instruction. All right. Then it is broken down into small groups, and they rotate between stations. That gives the teacher time to have teacher table and really focus in on that group and working with them individually. While the others are participating in quality group time, group activities, this is not fluff. This isn't, let's do a crossword puzzle, keep you busy. While the teacher is working, no. We have really good stations that we've set up. We've been doing a lot of training on that over the last few years, because that's not typically an upper elementary thing. You tend to see that in lower elementary.