EPISODE 4: Moving On

Back to Freedom School – Ongoing conversations about education equity in the State of Vermont

Moving On – with special host Brittany Lovejoy and guests Marilynne Kane Strachan and Dr. Kelly Sandman-Hurley

This week on Back to Freedom School, our special host, Brittany Lovejoy, sits down with Marilynne Kane Strachan, and Dr. Kelly Sandman-Hurley, to discuss their perspectives on some of the literacy challenges many of our schools were facing before the current global pandemic, and also explore some of the possibilities for achieving equity in accessing quality instruction and curriculum.

Brittany Lovejoy is the mother of four children with dyslexia, a writer, a private tutor, and a dedicated advocate for students. She has served as a special educator and has a graduate degree in the Foundations of Education with a concentration in Dyslexia Studies. Brittany pursues literacy truth by studying the Science of Reading.

Marilynne Kane Strachan packed up and moved her family out of Vermont in the midst of a global pandemic because her child didn’t have access to quality instruction and curriculum. “The risks and benefits of health and the social-emotional (moving to a place with higher rates of Covid-19 infections) and having my daughter now going into 4th grade, lose that traction, we all know what happens in 4th grade, we know after 3rd grade what the statistics are.” In regard to equity, Marilynne observed in her own experience, “I was the closest person on that board to anyone that had dealt with inequity, and that’s a shame because I come from, not privilege but I don’t have to worry about when food is coming, our jobs, we’re white, so we don’t have a race inequity, we don’t have any socioeconomic barrier so to speak, and I was the biggest voice there had to deal with inequity? It was really eye opening to me.”  Teaching and learning about how to read is Dr. Kelly Sandman-Hurley’s business, so she goes deep into the nuances of how our brains respond to reading, spelling and the meaning of letters and words. “When you are able to spell a word it means you understand the underlying structure of the word, if you understand the underlying structure of the word enough to be able to spell it when you come to it in reading you’re going to be able to read it because you’ve already analyzed it enough to spell it.” When asked what happens to students who fall behind, she lamented, “school is very traumatizing for kids who struggle.”

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