Daphne Russell | Educator and Author of “Read Or Die”

Welcome to the thirty-eighth episode of The Gap Minders! Today, we are speaking with the lovely Daphne Russell, who is an Educator and the Author of “Read or Die”!

In this absolutely eye-opening episode, Nancy and Jose are joined in studio by Daphne Russell, a 28 year former teacher and author of the 2018 book “Read or Die” as well as the Founder and Director of Book Save Lives. Having failed at retirement, Daphne is completely focused on building a model to take any student to a promising future by way of reading! Her view is that it is easy to turn any student into a successful reader by giving them agency, autonomy – and the RIGHT books!

Driven by a customer service mindset (with the student as the customer), combined with the right books, Daphne believes we can get all students to self-actualize by reading, if and only if we stop forcing the same book on all students with varied interests and reading capacity.

So, how does she lift reading outcomes? By having books of various levels – all vetted by children – available for the student to choose. Her only guidance is to know the vocabulary in the book chosen! By knowing the vocabulary, confidence and competence grows!

What else do we learn from Daphne in this excellent episode:

• Meet the students where they are!
• The vocabulary connection to reading success
• The customer service mindset in action
• The negative impact of having books chosen for students instead of vice versa
• The answers to the Rapid Fire questions!

A truly informative episode with an innovative gap minder. Thank you, Daphne Russell, for working daily to help students read to live, and for joining us on The Gap Minders.

Enjoy this episode and be sure to subscribe to the show.

If you have any questions or want to contact Nancy or Jose, please send an email to podcast@uwsd.org. Thank you for listening.

To learn more about the two social impact organizations making The Gap Minders possible, please visit www.TheGapMinders.org.