2020 P-3 Symposium

Emily Hanford is a senior producer and correspondent for APM Reports, the documentary and investigative journalism group at American Public Media. She sent shockwaves across the US and around the globe when her September 2018 podcast and article, Hard Words: Why Aren’t Kids Being Taught to Read? brought mainstream media attention to the importance of teacher knowledge about the science of reading. More recently, she produced a podcast and article about how children across the United States are being taught the habits of struggling readers (At a Loss for Words). In this keynote, Emily will tell the story of how she became interested in reading research after more than a decade of reporting on education mostly at the secondary and post-secondary levels. It’s clear there are no silver bullets in education, but Emily has become convinced that improving early reading instruction is the closest we’ve got.