Michael Smith is a school board president, and his story starts long before this week in Eugene. About three decades ago he taught DI in Chicago and watched it work, only to see the district drop it without explanation. Now he’s back at the NIFDI conference with his superintendent, deciding whether to bring DI to his district.
In this Interview:
- DI Works: Kindergartners and first graders reading to seventh and eighth graders
- The district switching to whole language without explanation, and the generations of students Michael believes paid for it
- Relearning a program that has changed a lot since he last taught it
- His message to other educators: get buy-in, teach with fidelity, and put your heart and soul into it
▸Show full transcript
[00:04] Hello everyone, welcome back to the Direct Instruction Podcast. My name is Zach Groshell, and I’m here with Michael. We’re going to talk a bit about your role as a school board member — school board president — because I’ve heard it’s a tough job. I’ve heard it’s at times a thankless job, even. Tell me about that role that you serve in.
[00:29] Well, my role is to make sure that we make good, sound decisions on what comes from the administration once they present it to us. The superintendent and I go over the agenda and decide what is going to be necessary to get approved for the district, you know, to help the kids out. That’s mainly my role — and making sure the board has pertinent information to make sound decisions.
[00:58] And I assume some of those decisions have to do with curriculum adoption, materials adoption?
[01:07] Yes, that’s the main thing. You have a team for that particular piece, which is your administrators. They decide on what curriculum is going to be used, and once they decide, they tell you how much it’s going to cost. Then they bring it back to the board members and explain, “This is what we want to use to help our kids out.” That’s the gist of it right there.
[01:31] So I’m hearing that you need to be informed in that position about what to look for. And so you’re here at the National Direct Instruction Conference and Institutes in Eugene. What drew you here? What are you here to learn about?
[01:47] It’s an interesting question. I’m going to say maybe about 29 years ago, I taught DI. Of course, things have developed over the years, but I taught it years ago, and I knew it worked because I taught it. Then maybe a few years later — I’d say about three, maybe four or five years, I can’t remember, you know how it is getting old now — it got canned.
[02:14] What was the reason it got canned?
[02:16] We never knew at that time. But we knew the program worked, because we used to have the kindergartners and first graders walk around the building and read to the seventh and eighth graders, or whatever class we decided to go to. The program worked extremely well for us, but it got canned. Now, why it got canned, I can’t answer that question. And that was — can I mention it? — CPS. I hate acronyms — Chicago Public Schools. It got canned, and I have no clue as of today why.
[02:54] It seems like a recurring story with so many people, and not just with DI. But it seems especially distressing when we talk about it in the context of DI, because data is so important. You collected all that data, and you saw kids who a lot of people expected not to succeed in school succeeding in their classrooms — often because the materials were so precise and taught the itty-bitty little things just before the hard part. And then you hear that it got removed and replaced with a program with very little evidence.
[03:29] Yeah. And I think at that time, when that decision was made, we were in the PD — professional development; like I said, I don’t like acronyms — and the whole paradigm got shifted. We went to whole language. And all of us looked at each other and said, “What?” “Well, we want the kids to write freely. We want the kids to do this. Don’t use red ink pens” — you know, the creative mind. And we knew that was going to be a disaster. So I think we probably lost maybe two generations of kids not succeeding.
[04:00] And now here we are in 2026, and the science of learning and the science of reading have become a focus in many districts. It just feels like the logical step is to return to a scientifically informed approach to teaching.
[04:24] Yeah, which has been around forever. Phonemic awareness — it’s been there forever.
[04:30] Yeah. So you have huge decisions on your hands, and you come here and get informed. Tell me about your courses and your institutes. How have those classes gone for you?
[04:41] I truly enjoyed all the classes. Of course, DI has evolved since I started — we’ll say 37 years ago. There’s a lot more material and data and all that other stuff, which I haven’t got a grasp on, because I haven’t done it in, what, 37 years? And it evolved. So that’s the reason I asked the superintendent to come — let’s just check it out and see which direction we want to go in terms of implementing this program. But it evolved, and I’m enjoying every bit of it right now.
[05:11] Yeah. And how has Eugene been?
[05:15] I really didn’t get a chance to get outside to see much. The first day, I just walked over to the market, whatever that is over there. Then I came back, and I’ve been stuck in the building pretty much since I’ve been here. So I didn’t get a chance to get out, because they had some activities going on once the classes were over, around 4:30 or so.
[05:36] Well, we’re so happy to have you here and for you to be able to tell your story. You’re doing the Lord’s work, in the sense that you’re working on behalf of kids.
[05:50] Yeah.
[05:51] And I think that’s what this whole conference is about.
[05:53] Yeah, and that’s what I’m trying to do. I want my administrative team and the teachers to buy in too. If they don’t buy in, the program’s not going to work. And to the other educators out there, I say: learn this program with fidelity. Put your heart and soul into it. It works. I know it works because I did it, and I taught my own kids under this system too. My three-year-old daughter was reading — she was reading at three years old. And it works, and it works extremely well. I had three kids — they were two, three, and four or five years old; it’s been a while — and I had them all reading. The two-year-old was a challenge, of course, but he came along. He did extremely well, and Kyle — all of them did extremely well, because I drilled them.
[06:45] Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. And listeners, thank you for tuning in to the DI Podcast and coming along for these little slice-of-life, itty-bitty recordings here at the NIFDI conference. Check out nifdi.org — the National Institute for Direct Instruction. They provide all the resources and information you need to get informed about Direct Instruction. Thanks.
