05/14/25 Live Event – Improving How SLPs and Teachers Address Dyslexia with Free E-Learning Modules

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Dr. Kai Greene currently is an Associate Professor in the College of Education: Special Education Department at California State University, Dominguez Hills. His clinical research background and areas of interest include diagnostics and assessment issues in multilingual populations with a particular focus on developmental language disorders. More recently, he has been a task force member of the UC/CSU Collaborative for Neuroscience, Diversity, and Learning. With over four decades of experience working in diverse public-school settings, his interest in how teachers teach and students learn continues.

Financial: Kai Greene, Ph.D. CCC-SLP is a paid consultant who helped write and develop some of the electronic learning modules as a task force member of the UC UC/CSU Collaborative for Neuroscience, Diversity, and Learning. The modules are available, free to the public, and are intended for university educational and clinical purposes for professors, students, and practitioners.

Non-financial – Kai Greene, Ph.D. CCC-SLP does not have any non-financial relationships to disclose.

The UC/CSU Collaborative for Neuroscience, Diversity, and Learning was established as an initiative based on emerging brain research which supports California’s K-12 students with learning differences. The Collaborative has developed a series of e-learning modules to support educational practitioners’ knowledge and awareness to address the unique educational needs of school-age children who present with speech-language-communication and literacy-based learning difficulties with a specific focus on dyslexia. During this presentation, participants will gain valuable knowledge from the learning modules across a range of related topics such as identification, characteristics, neuroscience, assessment, and intervention for students who present or appear at-risk for dyslexia.

The purpose of this presentation is to share the on-going work of UC/CSU task force and extend the focus beyond teacher preparation programs. Collaborative efforts will be discussed to see how current and future school-based speech-language pathologists and general and special education teachers can utilize the series of e-learning modules for common teaching and clinical purposes. In addition, there is a module focused on early childhood education that incorporates a family-centered approach.

Positioned at the intersectionality of literacy and equity, the Task Force is drawing upon the collaborative efforts of researchers, teacher educators, speech-language pathologists, and educational leadership to understand differences and identify commonalities in the pursuit of new knowledge and new actions to best prepare the next generation of new educational practitioners. Members of the Task Force include teacher educators from general, special, bilingual, and deaf education programs along with speech-language pathologists who would like to share information in the effort to promote and form collaborations with current and future educational practitioners and clinicians to address issues related to the speech-language-communication needs and developing literacy skills of school-age students.

The National Center for Disabilities reports that one in five children struggle with language-based learning difficulties. The International Dyslexia Association (IDA) reports that 15% of individuals are affected by dyslexia, which equates to nearly 1,000,000 students in California schools alone (Adams, 2017). In response to the learning needs of students with dyslexia, the California legislature passed AB 1369 in 2015. This legislation called for the development of guidelines to assist general and special education teachers and parents in identifying, assessing, planning, providing, evaluating, and improving educational services for students with dyslexia. As directed by AB 1369, the California Dyslexia Guidelines were released in 2017.

According to the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) (2019), nearly two thirds of all 4th and 8th graders read below proficient levels, with nearly one third of those reading below basic. The negative long-term consequences for those who struggle to read are well documented and include under- and unemployment, mental health challenges, and involvement with the criminal justice system. Concerns extend even further upon consideration of inequities: students of color, emergent bi-lingual learners and students with disabilities consistently score among the lowest of student groups on literacy assessment measures. Competency and proficiency across multiple literacy skills that include oral language, reading, writing and comprehension, are necessary for academic success, is a civil right, and the gap between reading

The UC/CSU California Collaborative for Neuroscience, Diversity and Learning brings together resources from the University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU) systems with an aim to strengthen educational support for students with diverse learning needs, including those with dyslexia. Launched in January 2020, with funding from the California state legislature, faculty from UCLA and CSU campuses (CSUN, CSUDH, CSULA) serving the Los Angeles basin are working together to develop instructional models that can be shared with other UC and CSU teacher preparation programs to achieve this goal.

While advancements in reading research have made significant contributions to an understanding of how students learn to read, some argue that these have not made their way into teacher education and classroom practice. For this reason, the UC/CSU Collaborative for Neuroscience, Diversity, and Learning established the Task Force comprised of teacher educators from the University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU) systems. With the goal to improve reading outcomes for California’s students, the Task Force charged itself with embedding the comprehensive and systematic teaching of reading in credential programs and coursework, and the design and dissemination of professional development materials, focused on dyslexia.

The Collaborative’s efforts contain multiple goals, yet the purpose of this session is to help guide and support speech-language pathologists, faculty, and clinical supervisors from communication science and disorders programs to access the electronic learning modules.

Participants will be able to:
• Identify characteristics and traits of students with or at-risk for dyslexia
• Describe how collaborations between speech-language pathologists and classroom education along with other school staff members can benefit students with language-learning difficulties to include dyslexia
• Describe two ways that speech-language pathologists’ clinical skills serve as a valuable resource in determining language-based learning difficulties such as dyslexia
• List ways to assist educators understanding the importance of cross-linguistic transfer when working with multilingual school-age populations who appear at-risk for language-learning challenges

Time-Ordered Agenda
10 minutes: Introduction and disclosures
15 minutes: The role of the speech-language pathologist and dyslexia
15 minutes: Functional ways to collaborate with school-based personnel, educators, and others
30 minutes: Overview of the UC/CSU Collaborative for Neuroscience, Diversity, and Learning electronic-learning modules and the link to the role of a school-based speech-language pathologist
5 minutes: Summary and future implications
15 minutes: Moderated questions and answer session