Special miniseries, Episode 5

Serving every student, in every seat, speaking any language, with Genie Baca

This episode features an in-depth conversation with Genie Baca, a 33-year education veteran who has spent the last 18 years as a principal in Texas. Baca discusses her career progression from a balanced literacy classroom teacher to various educational roles along her journey to the Science of Reading—and how it all led her to a unique school predominantly serving refugee students. This school—where 39 languages are spoken by the diverse student body—faces different challenges (and opportunities) than most schools. Baca shares some of the transformative strategies implemented under her leadership, particularly focusing on the Science of Reading and high-quality instructional materials. These strategies have significantly improved literacy and engagement, with a systematic approach adjusted for Tier 1 instruction to benefit all students, including monolingual and multilingual learners. Baca’s story showcases the positive influence strong leadership, a dedicated staff, and research-based educational methodologies can have when creating an inclusive, successful learning environment for a diverse student population.

Meet Our Guest(s):

Genie Baca

Genie Baca

Genie Baca brings over three decades of experience in the field of education to her work, in which she boasts a rich and diverse background spanning various roles within the educational landscape. She has been a classroom teacher, reading recovery teacher, curriculum specialist, and assistant principal, and now serves as Principal of Eastridge Elementary. Known for being the most complex elementary school in Baca’s district, Eastridge Elementary serves 560 students from countries all over the world. Collectively, there are 39 languages represented by this student body. Recently, Baca led her campus through the implementation of Amplify, Eureka, and PhD Science curricula. She holds a bachelor’s in education and a master’s in management.

Meet our host, Susan Lambert

Susan Lambert is the Chief Academic Officer of Elementary Humanities at Amplify, and the host of Science of Reading: The Podcast. Her career has been focused on creating high-quality learning environments using evidence-based practices. Lambert is a mom of four, a grandma of four, a world traveler, and a collector of stories.

As the host of Science of Reading: The Podcast, Lambert explores the increasing body of scientific research around how reading is best taught. As a former classroom teacher, administrator, and curriculum developer, Lambert is dedicated to turning theory into best practices that educators can put right to use in the classroom, and to showcasing national models of reading instruction excellence.

Retrato de una mujer caucásica sonriente con cabello rubio corto, involucrada en un podcast sobre la ciencia de la lectura, con gafas, lápiz labial rojo y un collar de perlas.

Transcripts and additional resources:

Transcript

Quotes

“What professional learning communities does, it teaches you, again, systems on how to look at data, how to lesson plan, how to make formative assessments, how do you respond to data, the whole everything.”

—Genie Baca

“I couldn't just lead my campus into the Science of Teaching Reading if I didn't open myself up to, maybe I was wrong…it wasn't easy, but it really took me looking at student work to prove that what I had been doing all these years wasn't working.”

—Genie Baca

“It's serving every child we have in the seat, whether they're monolingual or they speak two or three languages. What works is a systematic approach to learning how to read.”

—Genie Baca

“Now that we know better? And we know more about the research, and that how speaking and reading go together, we're just getting smarter. We're just learning more about how reading works, how the brain works, how kids acquire knowledge, and we just have to be smarter, I guess, in how we do things.”

—Genie Baca