Understanding Literacy in Modern Education: Insights from Rancho Santa Fe School District

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Welcome to Literacy Mindset where education leaders from across the country share strategies for improving K-12 instruction today and preparing for the challenges of tomorrow. The stakes are high, students are facing new academic demands, and educators are navigating an ever-changing educational landscape. Each episode, we explore the most effective literacy initiatives, innovative tools and strategies that are reshaping education.

Whether you're an educator looking to improve student outcomes or passionate about driving meaningful change in schools, the Literacy Mindset brings you the insights and strategies you need to stay ahead.

Jeff Pendleton (0:41)

All right. Welcome everybody.

Back to another episode of the Literacy Mindset. Very excited to have my guests today, Joe Erpelting and Tammy Parker, who join us from the Rancho Santa Fe School District in Southern California. Welcome to the show.

Joe Erpelting (0:57)

Thank you so much.

Jeff Pendleton (0:59)

I'm excited to have the conversation about all things literacy. Sometimes we go a little bit broad in our definition of literacy, but we might talk about AI, we might talk about other things. But for the most part, we really emphasize a focus on reading and in the state of the world today. So excited to dive into that. Maybe let's give a little context here in the beginning. Tammy, if you want to just give an introduction of why you're here at the table, and then Joe will have you give your background here.

Tammy Parker (1:35)

I started out my career in the 90s as a special education teacher. I taught two types of classes. One was students who have moderate to extensive needs, and then a couple of years I taught students who had mild to moderate needs.

Went on to get my master's, became a school psychologist for 16 years, best job in the world. Then got pulled into administration and been doing that for about a decade now. I'm the director of special ed now.

Jeff Pendleton (2:02)

Excellent. Thank you. All right, Joe.

Joe Erpelting (2:05)

Thanks. I started out in actually the counseling world. I was working with kids one-on-one, and then realized I wanted to have a little deeper circle of influence. Went back to school and got my teaching credential in California. Worked in K-5 schools for quite some time, then became assistant principal.

This is my fourth principalship in public education, and just love the work that we get to do in public ed. So, I'm happy to be here with you.

Jeff Pendleton (2:32)

Thank you. Okay, great. That's helpful context. Tammy, can you set the stage for us just a little bit about Rancho Santa Fe School District? Give us a little history or size or just something that gives us context on the district. Sure.

Tammy Parker (2:47)

We're actually about to celebrate our 100th year. We are a tiny school district, just under 500 students. We're K-8.

Like you said, we're kind of in the middle of San Diego County, down in Southern California. We're a high-performing school district. It's a very affluent community.

Our class sizes are very small. We try to have no more than 20 students per class, even in our middle school grades. So yeah, there's a lot of really positive things that we're able to do here. So it's a really special district.

Jeff Pendleton (3:25)

Yeah, that sounds sad and exciting. So we'll dive in to some of the things that you get the luxury of being able to do, and maybe some of the challenges that just come from size. There's always trade-offs. The world is full of trade-offs, right? We get to talk a little bit about them. And we love being able to hear different perspectives. So, okay, K-8 District, Joe, K-5 building here, running out. How do we think about just the initial literacy track here? Is this an adopted core curriculum that you work off of? Did you guys build your own literacy curriculum?

How is literacy taking hold right in the early stages?

Joe Erpelting (4:06)

Yeah, this is my third year here at the school, so there's a lot of legacy type programs that has a lot of autonomy by being in a small district. So we don't feel like we have a lot of the state mandates coming down on us. Obviously, we have the state framework that we get to work from. Many years, teachers were going to lots of trainings, teacher college, looking at the balanced literacy approach.

And so when I came in, what we were really focused in on is how do we have a strong intervention program? So we had a really strong tier one supports. And so our partnership has really been building out the tier two and tier three supports in reading. Figuring out like, yes, our kids still need to do phonics. Yes, they need to have fluency timings. Yes, they still need to do comprehension like tasks. And so looking at that really like a holistic approach to literacy and ensuring that we can find out what those blind spots are that we have, that I think was really helpful. Leveraging data, having meetings and intervention meetings to talk about kids very specifically.