Get to Know Jennifer Cole, Content Director, Literacy, Humanities, and Languages

Jennifer Cole discusses her career spanning more than two decades in educational publishing. Jennifer shares how her knowledge and experience help her lead her team of literacy and humanities content development professionals to create high-quality educational materials for Westchester's clients.

Transcript

Nicole Tomassi: 0:07

Welcome to Westchester words, education ed tech and publishing. I'm Nicole Tomassi and in this episode, I'll be speaking with Jennifer Cole who recently joined Westchester Education Services as Content Director for Literacy, Humanities, and Languages. We'll be talking about Jennifer's experiences in education and how that will inform her role here at Westchester. Jennifer, welcome to Westchester Words.

Jennifer Cole: 0:32

Hi Nicole. Thank you so much for having me. This is really exciting,

Nicole Tomassi: 0:35

Jennifer. It's great to have you here. How about we begin with having you share with listeners a bit about your background and what attracted you to the field of education publishing?

Jennifer Cole: 0:45

Oh, what a great way to start. Thank you so much for asking. So I started in educational publishing, uh, more than 20 years ago when I was a student in Boston. I was getting my masters degree and I was looking to see what kinds of industries would really align with what I was interested in studying, which is children's literature. And one of the alums in my graduate program had a position available as an editorial assistant at Houghton Mifflin, which at the time was just Houghton, Mifflin, not yet Houghon Mifflin Harcourt in the reading department. And so I had this unique opportunity to see where this intersection of children's literature and, um, language acquisition and reading acquisition really started to happen. And as an editorial assistant I got this, you know, ground up view of educational publishing and just immediately fell in love with it. I fell in love with the, um, the, the words themselves, but also just with the excitement of creating something from scratch.

Nicole Tomassi: 1:48

So is that one of the things that appeals to you about developing learning materials in the areas of literacy and also by extension humanities?

Jennifer Cole: 1:58

Absolutely, Nicole. I think that knowing that the content that we are putting out into the world helps students not only learn about whatever the skills and strategies are, but also in some ways I hope that they're learning about themselves and to see kids, and for me, especially young kids really acquire language when they can make those connections between, you know, sounds and spellings between letters and words. Um, the first time either seeing a, a student in a classroom or a kid that I know, um, just make that connection and, and their eyes light up and they, they get it. I love it, which is also a nice way of saying I really love phonics. And so<laugh> phonics is, is another one of the things that has, um, attracted me to this industry and then kept me in the field of, of literacy for sure.

Nicole Tomassi: 2:50

And I know what you mean about when a child makes that connection between what's I guess on the page, cuz I'm old school, you know, and they make that between an object or a person and the printed word on the page and you see that light bulb go off and it just, it seems like it opens up this entire doorway for them. And I've always thought of literacy as being a gateway through which all other areas of learning can be entered into mm-hmm<affirmative> cause if you don't have the ability to read or understand the content, it's hard to explore other subject areas. How do you feel literacy content has evolved during your time in education publishing?

Jennifer Cole: 3:29

You know what, Nicole, in exactly that way. I've seen so many, um, increases in cross curricular and cross content literacy on the importance of, of reading across the subject areas where when I started it, it seemed like it was a little bit more focused on just kind of some rote repetition, some phonics, some whole language, some balanced literacy, and during, during my time in this industry, things have really progressed so that when we're talking about literacy, we're not just talking about our ABCs. We're also sometimes talking about our one, two, threes. We're also talking about maybe physics, maybe we're talking about rocket science, maybe we're talking about, um, historical events and all of those things get wrapped up and in the literacy umbrella, because you're absolutely right. If you can't read, you are not gonna be able to have a successful career as a student, as an adult. And really it's gonna be hard in society in general. So the, the literacy content now is so rich and so meaningful and really does artfully encompass all of the content areas, um, with which we work. And so that's exciting.

Nicole Tomassi: 4:44

So do you feel that now that there's this more, I guess, holistic approach, um, to literacy and the other subject areas that are taught in K-12 that it is improving academic outcomes across all subject areas?

Jennifer Cole: 4:58

That is a great question. And while I have not done a wide-scale study of that, um, I would like to think, yes, at least with the products that I have worked on over the years, you know, the results are measurable that when a student can succeed in, in the basics of reading and comprehension, they can succeed more in all of the content areas

Nicole Tomassi: 5:29

Makes sense to me, although somehow I just never grasped those higher math functions.

Jennifer Cole: 5:33

<laugh> but maybe cause

Nicole Tomassi: 5:35

I didn't have them in early literacy<laugh>

Jennifer Cole: 5:37

I can actually decode them quite well though. So,

Nicole Tomassi: 5:41

So Jennifer, you've been with Westchester for a few months now and I'm wondering, how has the experience been in getting to know, um, the team that you're working with internally as well as the clients that you're working with on their projects?

Jennifer Cole: 5:55

Oh, it's been a wonderful experience. Uh, to be honest, Westchester has been such a welcoming place. Uh, I really appreciate the, the human-centered workplace that Westchester seeks to achieve and is constantly trying to improve upon. Uh, the relationships with my team members are not only meaningful, but also interesting. You know, we work with such a diverse group of people and it's wonderful to be able to have the space and time to get to know folks, to get to know different working styles, um, to, to have relationships with clients, some of whom are new, some of whom I've worked with before at other companies. And it's, it's really been a wonderful experience and, and it, the months have flown by,

Nicole Tomassi: 6:41

Well, that's great. I'm really happy to hear that. Um, to take this in a bit of a different direction, um, as you and I both know, there can be many reasons why companies may be hesitant about working with the content development house, such as Westchester, including concerns around the ability to capture their particular voice in the content that's being created or, you know, something as, as granular as the cost of outsourcing, uh, development services. And I'm wondering if there's any kind of advice you would wanna share with people who are thinking about those kind of aspects?

Jennifer Cole: 7:16

Absolutely. I think that if you're a client listening and you're hesitant about working with a, a content development house like Westchester or specifically Westchester, please come talk to us and let's have a conversation about what we can do for you and how we can best represent your interests. Um, especially about voice Nicole, that's so important that we really on every single project and with every single client strive to achieve the client's voice as a vendor, the materials that we're producing are our clients' materials. And so we not only try to achieve that voice, uh, through guidelines, through samples, but also through conversations with our clients, making sure that we understand the, the purpose. Um, how the materials are gonna be used in the classroom, how these materials are gonna be delivered, if there is a specific tone and even some things such as making sure that we are using the same dictionary, the same copyediting guidelines, um, making sure that our, our style guides are what our clients like and the way that they use them. And I'm really glad that you asked this question because it is always a conversation actually that we have a lot with, with new clients is how are you going to make sure that this is our product and not your product? And so that's something that as vendors, um, in an editorial space that we really work hard to achieve. And then in terms of the cost to outsource services, we like to work with our clients to make sure that the costs match our clients' budgets as much as possible. When we put together bids and estimates, we make sure that we are charging what we feel are fair market rates for the services that we're providing. But we also have discussions about what are we really providing? We don't want to overestimate. We really don't want to underestimate. We want to give an accurate financial representation of the services, and we want to make sure that it's clearly understood what the deliverables are, um, what the schedule looks like, and really that we're gonna produce what our clients are expecting on time on budget and in their voice.

Nicole Tomassi: 9:24

Are you finding that clients are, are pleased in the sense of the costs that they don't always necessarily account for in their budgets, including for project management or multiple passes on the editorial content, those sorts of things, it's, it's kind of taken off their plate and it frees up their in-house staff to work on other key parts of that project or another project. Do you find that's this hidden benefit that surfaces from working with a group like Westchester?

Jennifer Cole: 9:53

Absolutely. Um, I think that actually that's one of the most important benefits of working with a group like Westchester, is that we have the resources to be able to compliment our clients in house staff. And we might have resources that a client might not see a benefit in keeping on full time or on staff that we have access to. Um, and especially we are able to scale up for larger projects. We're able to scale down for smaller projects. We work with hundreds and hundreds of freelancers who have all different skill sets, and we are able to customize teams to our clients' specific projects and to the specific needs. I think another benefit that maybe doesn't get talked enough about is that because we are a vendor and because we do work with multiple clients over time, we internalize a large understanding of different products and different educational approaches. So one of the benefits that we bring to our clients is being able to say, this is a trend that we're seeing in the market, or, oh, what an interesting idea. We have a suggestion about, you know, this, this type of, um, teacher feedback, or yes, we are fluent in the assessment platform that you use because we've used it numerous times. So we have the benefit of working on a lot of projects for a number of different clients, and then generating additional skills with every project that we work on.

Nicole Tomassi: 11:31

It's like getting the boutique experience, all this collective wealth of knowledge from across our client base. And we focus it to the specific needs of that particular client's project.

Jennifer Cole: 11:43

Yes, exactly. So we offer a myriad of services in all the different content areas and not just for editorial, also for design, for composition and for project management. But the benefit of working with Westchester is that we really personalize the experience to our clients. We want to ensure that we are producing the programs, the components, the assessment, the teachers guides, the student editions, the leveled readers, the decodable passages, the scope and sequences, whatever it is that our clients are looking for, that we are producing it in a way that not only informs our clients, but informs the way that we do our work. So yes, I think you're right, Nicole. I think that it is a truly boutique experience with the benefit of a larger vendor.

Nicole Tomassi: 12:33

So not to put you too much on the spot, Jennifer, but especially over the last couple of years with things, including the pandemic and, um, the rising spotlight on diversity, equity, and inclusion, how has that found its way into how learning materials are created and the way that they're delivered so that they're in alignment with state standards and what publishers want to be creating, uh, to meet those guidelines?

Jennifer Cole: 13:00

Hmm, excellent question. Uh, in my experience, the way that materials are being created and delivered, it has changed. I mean, it's changed significantly over time and not just because of the pandemic, but over the past 20 years, I've gone from working on, they were called ectos. They're big, huge pages with grease pencils<laugh>, um, and the proverbial red pen to doing most things digitally. Um, at this point, I, I can't believe it myself, but I don't even have a printer in my office. Um, so the materials though are still being created by folks who have a deep understanding of the educational practices, because either they've been trained in them through classroom experiences, or because they have had the experience of working on, uh, materials for classrooms for a number of years. We do so much now throughout the country. And that's one of the great things actually that I think has been an improvement. Um, in publishing. When I first started, of course, you're sitting in one place with the people who are directly around you today, I work with editors from, you know, the Northeast to the Southwest everywhere in between and on multiple continents. Uh, and that includes writers, copy editors, freelancers, folks who are great at decode ability and readability and all of the different services that we provide within our editorial groups. Uh, so we are creating when we're creating national programs, we're really working with folks who are in all these various locations and are bringing their own experiences to what they're doing. You know, needless to say, we also use a lot of different platforms, but that we can talk about that on another podcast. In terms of the way that materials are delivered. We've seen a change in that too. The rise of, uh, digital delivery, of course, with the pandemic, having this, this kind of sudden shift to a lot of digital first and digital forward, um, product was kind of jarring. And so we are seeing most of our companies that we work with, uh, will either have a simultaneous release of a print and a digital product, or a lot of folks are doing a digital only product. Uh, for us as editors that has changed the delivery mechanism. But the intent that we put into the pages, the educational experience that we're still trying to achieve, that hasn't changed overly much because the ultimate goal is educate kids in the best way that we know how. And I'm also really glad that you asked about DEI because this is a great opportunity to mention. I am so glad to be at Westchester because of our focus on DEI and on CRE, we are really trying to be intentional about the way that we create materials. Um, this is something that if you're a current client of ours, you hopefully will have already known this. Um, but DEI and specifically CRE reviews are something that we do with almost every single product to make sure that students can actually see themselves in the content. You know, I think, um, recently there was an article I was reading about standardized testing, and I'm sure that if you've kept up with things you've heard, you know, standardized testing isn't necessarily fair. It's not necessarily fair because there isn't this representational lens in standardized testing. Not all students can see themselves in that. Not all students are able to connect. And one of the things that we want to do, like I said earlier, is we really wanna make sure that the materials that we're putting out into the educational sphere are not only effective educationally, but also really give students the opportunity to connect with educational materials in a meaningful way.

Nicole Tomassi: 16:25

That is such a well considered response. Thank you for sharing that. Jennifer, I just have one final question to ask today and it's something I really enjoy asking first time guests of the podcast, because I've without fail, received very thoughtful responses from them. So the question is, is there one piece of advice that you wish someone had given you when you first started out in your professional career? Or is there something that you would wanna share with others that you've learned on your journey so far?

Jennifer Cole: 16:54

Mm, my advice to folks just starting out in their professional career, and I don't think that this is specific to educational publishing is advocate for yourself. When you see something that interests you in your career path, go for it because ultimately it might be fantastic and you might end up, I don't know, becoming the director of literacy humanities, and languages at some place interesting like Westchester. But really advocate for yourself and go after what you want.

Nicole Tomassi: 17:26

Well, I'm glad you advocated for yourself and that you are now here with the rest of the team at Westchester and bringing in all of your experience and knowledge along with the rest of the team, into the content that you're creating for our clients. I want to thank you so much for joining me today on Westchester Words.

Jennifer Cole: 17:43

Thank you so much for having me. This has been really fun.

Nicole Tomassi: 17:46

We'll have to do it again sometime

Speaker 3: 17:48

Mm-hmm<affirmative>.

Nicole Tomassi: 17:53

Thank you for listening to this episode of Westchester words. If you're looking for previous episodes or want to read additional content that has been shared by some of our guests, please visit our websites. Westchester publishing services.com and Westchester education services.com for an international perspective, check out our sister podcast, Westchester words, UK and international available on the Westchester education, UK website, Westchester education.co.uk or wherever you stream podcasts. We'd love hearing from our listeners and welcome your emails a t Westchester w ords a t Westchester ed SV, c s.com. Tell us what you enjoy hearing on our podcast or suggest topics that we can cover in future episodes. Speaking of future episodes, I look forward to having you join us for the next episode of Westchester w ords, when we'll be having another engaging conversation about a topic of interest to the education, ed tech and publishing communities until then stay s afe, be well and s tay tuned.