I met Katie Luedtke two years ago, when the Knowledge Matters Campaign visited Saville Elementary School in the Mad River School District (just outside of Dayton, Ohio). Saville was the fifth of six stops on a tour of schools across the country serving children from low-income households that had recently adopted new English language arts (ELA) curriculum specifically designed to build students’ background knowledge of the world.

Historically one of the lowest performing schools in the state, during the previous year, Saville had embarked on an ambitious effort not just to implement a new curriculum but to teach ELA in a very different way.

Katie is one of the teachers who pushed for a change. She has been at Saville for 18 years—her entire teaching career. With undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Dayton’s education program (one of the most highly regarded teacher preparation programs in the country) and receiving National Board Certification in 2007, Katie is clearly in the elite ranks when it comes to teacher qualification. Still, she had grown frustrated with her inability, and that of the rest of Saville’s faculty, to create and deliver a curriculum that met the needs of their students.

Katie’s angst reached its peak when she moved from first to third grade and realized the extent to which her students struggled with understanding the passages they were reading. How were they ever going to be able to learn from texts?

Katie and her colleagues embarked on an investigation to learn more about effective ELA curricula. They were especially compelled by evidence that children need abundant exposure to rich content and ample opportunities to dive deep into topics, including the vocabulary that describes them, to create the “Velcro” to which other knowledge, gained through reading, can attach.

There were many realizations and lessons learned as the Saville teachers took this journey. One was that asking teachers—even gifted, highly skilled ones like Katie—to both develop and deliver this kind of curriculum (“to both write the music and conduct the orchestra”) was giving them an impossible task.

In 2016, Mad River made the decision to adopt a comprehensive, high-quality ELA curriculum, doing so after teachers like Katie reviewed some of the new instructional materials on the market in the wake of the Common Core State Standards. Ultimately, they selected one they felt would work for them (Wit & Wisdom, by Great Minds), and at the point we visited them, they had spent about 18 months learning to implement it.

The level of student engagement and the quality of the teaching I observed during our visit to Saville Elementary produced many “goose bump” moments. For example, the Socratic seminar Katie so elegantly (and lightly!) facilitated—on the wisdom of President Kennedy’s decision to launch the space race—was a privilege to see and a real highlight of our tour.

Katie’s article describes her and her colleagues’ journey from being the songwriters to orchestra conductors. It is a rare glimpse into what being on the frontline of a professional learning metamorphosis entailed. I am confident readers will learn much from this up-close look at how school transformation can happen (Saville now scores well above the state average in ELA!) and that they will relate well to the professional pride Katie and her colleagues are beginning to feel about finally beginning to meet the needs of the students they serve.