EdCircuit Staff 
Sam Deffes 
Hilary Price 
Table of Contents
Literacy is essential for all aspects of education and life. Giving students the gift of reading does not just support them to be writers and readers. Literacy allows students to become successful engineers, mathematicians, tech professionals, teachers, business leaders, and so much more. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, many students have fallen behind in their literacy learning. How do we provide proper resources to teachers to get their students back on track?
Creating Space For Literacy Solutions
In this episode of Conference Connections, an interview series with K20 thought leaders, we chat with Sam Deffes and Hilary Price from Learning Without Tears. The edCircuit team caught up with the duo at FETC 2023. The topic of this discussion was supplemental learning, professional development, and literacy.
“It’s one thing to take [literacy] products and programs and use it in the classroom, but it’s quite another to use it to its full capacity. That’s really what we want educators to be doing: understanding the programs and the products as a whole and in their entirety and using them to their full capacity that way. So, we love providing that professional room for educators in all of our programs.”
Bringing Literacy to the Forefront of Recovery
At the beginning of this conversation, Hilary and Sam explore their professional development resources for schools. Through print and digital tools, Learning Without Tears provides an easy-to-integrate curriculum for teachers to implement in their classrooms.
Learning Without Tears’ has historically supported schools with a broad spectrum of literacy readiness, including reading, writing, keyboarding, and more. With their new program, Phonics Reading and Me, they have implemented curricula and tools to implement effective and efficient literacy education. Their goals are focused on the PreK-5th grade market, and using the science of reading has revolutionized their approach.
The Importance of Robust Reading Support & Education
In the second half of the conversation, Sam and Hilary explore the assessment tool that Learning Without Tears offers in their program. As many Early Childhood Education educators can attest, assessment is essential to building the foundations for lifelong literary learning. Using their assessment tool, teachers are able to see their students’ baseline knowledge, track progress, and introduce supplemental learning to address gaps in skill acquisition.
Sam and Hilary also discuss their professional development services. As trainers for the program, Sam and Hilary have hands-on experience working with educators to integrate the program into their classrooms. These services are essential and give teachers the tools they need to properly teach the curriculum.
Building Literacy Skills For Lifelong Learning
The conversation closes with a discussion on the recent success Learning Without Tears has seen nationally. They are currently piloting their new program and researching its effectiveness across several districts. They are hoping to use this research as a foundation to expand the Phonics Reading and Me program to serve the needs of all PreK-5 learners.
Overall, this conversation highlights how important literacy is and how tools such as those offered by Learning Without Tears can be to academic recovery. Their tools and content are setting foundational skills for the next generation of readers. To learn more about Learning Without Tears, visit their website and follow them on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
For more episodes on Conference Connections, visit edCircuit.
Learn more about the participants below.
