What is a reading pen?

Great question! A reading pen is a piece of assistive technology that supports learners with reading needs like dyslexia with text-to-speech feedback.

It’s a very popular method of helping students decode and comprehend what they’re reading in class, and they help students of all ages foster more confidence when it comes to books, reading and learning.  

More than just dyslexia support  

Reading pens like the C-Pen Reader 2 are an adaptable tool for supporting any readers who might be struggling with text on a page, including those who haven’t mastered the fundamentals yet, those with sight loss, and English Language Learners (ELLs) who might be finding it difficult to shift between their home or preferred language, and the one that they use in school. 

One thing we don’t tend to talk as much about, however, is how the introduction of reading pens can support educators too. 

Teachers all over Canada are seeing an uptick in workload as we come out of the pandemic learning era. It’s a time when schools are taking stock of the needed learning recovery, and with expectations growing across the administrative and prep side of the profession too, educators are experiencing burnout in a way that we’ve never seen before.  

How can a reading pen lighten the load, and help educators reclaim their teaching bandwidth? 

A reading pen means the ability to beat educator burnout  

Teachers multitask. It’s part of the job, but unfortunately, it has the potential to lead to burnout very quickly. As multitasking between many tasks over a lesson actively depletes available bandwidth for important ‘higher-order’ tasks like prep work and professional development, it can cause teachers to feel stressed or overwhelmed by the tasks on the table, as well create as a backlog of important things to be worked through. 

Supporting learners with reading needs accounts for a large portion of this in-class multitasking as it has to take precedence over almost everything else… and there are often multiple learners who need reading support in any one classroom, too. When learners can’t read their materials, they can’t learn effectively, so they need immediate and comprehensive literacy support in order to participate. Educators are then off-plan and off-task, their to-do lists get longer, and the bandwidth to pursue things like training and planning is shortened by exhaustion and disengagement, as well as time constraints.  

With a reading pen, learners with reading needs develop the ability to self-support and overcome some of their daily reading challenges without the need for educator intervention. As a result, they become more confident in their reading and their ability to problem-solve, and educators can focus on the whole class. When lessons themselves are less stressful and they’re not quite spread as thinly between tasks, teachers have more mental bandwidth for the administrative and developmental aspects of the role.  

No more waiting for support availability  

Not all schools have the learning support professionals that learners need to hand. Many schools are dealing with a lack of human readers, or struggling to resource language support due to an international shortage of bilingual teachers and paraprofessionals. These support gaps can really add up: if learners are waiting on provision, and it could be weeks or even months before the gaps are filled, then all the while their skills are developing more slowly than their peers.

This is a situation that requires a lot from educators: not only do they have to support at the point of need, they also have to navigate things like disengagement and anxiety from the learner as they’re aware they’re falling behind.  

With the introduction of a reading pen, learners can self-support as they wait for other kinds of intervention, and this frees up educator bandwidth for whole-class activities. They can also overcome the need for some kinds of in-person reading support altogether: many students find that they prefer a reading pen, as it’s far more discreet and can travel with them outside of the classroom.  

Problem-solving leads to confidence  

When learners realise that they can work through problems that arise themselves, they gain confidence in their abilities to tackle new things and work at a higher level. It’s confidence that it might take an educator a lot of time to foster in a learner: from reaffirming their capability through ongoing tasks to trying to change their self-perceptions around their own reading skills, many learners simply won’t believe that they’re capable if they can easily assign the successful task completion to an educator who’s sat next to them. It might be due to low self-esteem or even learned helplessness, but overcoming it is vital if we’re to foster independent reading. 

A reading pen bucks the trend in that when it comes down to it, the hands-on help a reader receives is from the device—successful completion can’t be assigned to anyone else, and even if learners believe that they’re only able to read because of the pen, it’s not like assigning that success to a teacher who’s not always going to be there. A reading pen can travel with them every day in the classroom, into the home, and even into the exam hall in the form of an exam-ready reading pen, so it forces the issue of self-belief: they can do it. And they’ll be able to do it again, too.  

Compassion fatigue  

Reading pens can support educators in some of the emotional aspects of their work, as well as giving student mental health a welcome (and vital) boost.  

‘Compassion fatigue’ is a phrase that was first used to refer to the experiences of healthcare professionals who, dealing with high emotion and dealing with trauma on a daily basis, described developing feelings of apathy and an inability to connect with people. More recently, it’s a term that’s also been applied to the experiences of educators, especially since the pandemic. 

Class teachers can internalise and absorb their students’ trauma, often to the point of physical and mental exhaustion. In scenarios where more learners are feeling distress, the more educators absorb and have to navigate; and one of the scenarios that learners find the most distressing is falling behind, developing a gap in attainment, and fearing sanctions as a result of poor performance. 

Especially after the learning loss that occurred over the pandemic, learners are feeling anxious about progress and underdeveloped reading skills, and these feelings may grow as standardized tests and assignments get nearer. Self-support isn’t just about getting better grades: sometimes it’s about beating the negative feelings too. 

A reading pen empowers reading at home  

Reading support in the classroom helps learners enhance their skills, but what about when the bell rings for the end of the day? Those learners still need support at home, whether that’s for revision and planning or homework. In-person reading support can’t pass through the school gate, but so much reading progress can be made during at-home tasks it’s important not to rule it out as a site of learning. When that doesn’t happen, it’s teachers who end up needing to support the catch-up study and the confidence slides, and it can take a lot of academic and emotional bandwidth.  

A reading pen that can travel home with the learner unlocks a whole new sphere of reading and learning. Not only is homework easier to understand and complete, but reading for pleasure becomes a possible and attractive prospect. Often, it’s easier to stoke excitement for books when learners are at home and surrounded by reading materials that more readily cater to their interests, rather than in a book corner or library at school. It’s that curiosity and drive to read that educators often find difficult to replicate in the classroom, as no class book appeals to everybody: a three-page feature on the NBA playoffs can be a gateway to reading in just the same way as Dr. Seuss.  

So how much can a reading pen save schools and school boards? 

Educator burnout is expensive. It’s an equation we have to dig around in the data a little to cost out accurately, but it's worth it because the financial conclusions are dramatic.

90% of educators report experiencing burnout. And that means resignations: teachers are leaving the profession in numbers we’ve not seen before, with many citing burnout as one of the instigating factors. It can cost up to twice a worker’s annual salary to replace them, especially if they’re in a higher or technical field like education… which is a lot when we consider the cash margins that many schools and boards working within.  

Cost of rehiring to a teaching job lost to burnout — $97,500

Average educator salary for Canada: $48,750.00 

$48,750.00 x 2 

= $97, 500.00 

We also have to consider how many sick days that burnout is costing schools and boards a year. Employees suffering from work-related stress are far more likely to take sick days, as well as extended stress leave time. Substitute teachers and EAs are also harder to come by than ever before, and the prices that they can command are higher than ever.  

Cost of 10 days legally required sick leave — $3,375

Average supply teacher cost per day: $162.54 

Average teacher sick pay cost per day: $175.00 

$162.54 + $175.00 x 10 

= $3,375.40 

And especially post-Covid, more teachers are spending more time officially off-task than ever before, because there are so many competing classroom responsibilities that command their attention. An English lesson plenary task might get derailed entirely because one or two learners need support in accessing the work in front of them, or student mental health support might be the order of the day when a class test gets returned and learners are confronted with information that indicates they’re off-target or struggling. So that’s whole-class learning time lost too, which for most schools and boards still has a cash value—even if that time is being spent on other, more urgent tasks to do with learner support and wellbeing.  

Cost of off-task instruction time across a year— $7,125

Average teacher salary per hour: $25.00 

Estimated combined instruction time lost in one day: 1.5 hours 

Amount of days in a school year: 190 

$25.00 x 1.5 x 190 

= $7,125.00 

The math isn’t exact as salaries and term lengths vary from province to province, but it does add a financial element to the idea of burnout. As well as just thinking about the logistics of learning time lost and staff cover, it can be expensive… and many school boards are working with smaller margins than ever before. 

Support teachers and beat burnout with the C-Pen Reader 2! 

The C-Pen Reader 2is a text-to-speech reading aid that supports readers and helps them build their skills, ready to take on any challenge and free up vital educator bandwidth.  

● It’s as simple as scan, listen and understand—simply move the pen across the page to hear the text read aloud. 

● Users can choose between listening through the pen’s built-in speaker, or a pair of headphones that plug into the jack. And when they use headphones… 

● It’s incredibly discreet, meaning that users don’t have to worry about feeling singled out or distracting their classmates with the sound.  

● Multiple dictionaries, multiple-language support and a word practice and recorder function mean that it’s easy to build vocabularies and confidence. 

● And it’s rechargeable and works independent of WiFi, meaning that it can be used wherever reading and learning happen. 

● It’s practically like having a tutor in their pocket, but for a fraction of the cost… and crucially, able to travel between home and the classroom with ease.  

● And there are zero-storage pens designed to support learners in exams, too! 

To find out more about how reading pens can support educators and beat the burnout curve where you are, head over to www.scanningpens.ca, or send us a message via cainfo@scanningpens.com!