As a classroom teacher, I felt anxious when visitors observed, so as a coach I attributed my nervousness about observations to sympathy pains. But now I know that principals, vice principals, and even coaches rarely watch instruction, and I’ve heard many confessions like this: “I realized that the biggest barrier was in my own head. I actually felt shy about going into classrooms for an in-depth look. It was as
The Standards Trap: Why Grade-Level Teaching Fails Our Students
December 7, 2024
The Common Core Standards were marketed as a great equalizer—if we provided standards-aligned lessons, then all students would be prepared for college and career. But the more I learn about effective reading instruction, the more I realize that the obsession with standards alignment may be pulling us away from the teaching our students actually need. Near-Perfect Reviews, Imperfect Results I felt something was off in the comprehension lesson plans in
Getting Reading Right Is Messy: No One Has It All Figured Out
October 28, 2024
“I wish my school were like that.” I clicked through a slidedeck about a literacy improvement plan and I felt a pang of envy. “I wish my work was so straightforward and my school’s progress so steady.” But these were my slides. The students, teachers, moments captured in photographs, and ideas represented in bullet points–they were all from my school. So why, while looking at evidence of my school’s improvement,
Does it Really Matter How Kids Are Taught, If They Eventually Learn How to Read?
September 25, 2024
I loved my first grade teacher, but she didn’t teach me how to read. The Start of a Problem Mrs. B earned her teaching credential during the height of Whole-Language. She read aloud to us every day and led projects related to books– making moon hats like Little Bear and our own Stone Soup. For a whole-class rendition of Where the Wild Things Are, a parent volunteer taped construction paper
Doubt Crept In: Questioning My Faith in Reading Research
August 7, 2024
Uh oh I thought that the more I knew about the science of reading, the better my teaching would become. And I’ve staked so much of my identity on this belief that my newfound doubt has shaken me terribly. At a recent conference for reading researchers, I realized: “There is a whole world of reading science that is not meant for me.” Panicked, I said to a researcher-friend: “Please tell
Hoping for the Best is Not a Viable Strategy
July 6, 2024
We’re keeping our worries about the Science of Reading movement quiet, afraid that voicing them will somehow increase the chances that it could fail. But anyone who cares deeply about its success is plagued by “what ifs” that keep us up at night. What if we fall short because… Anyone knowledgeable about reading research and what’s happening in classrooms has worries like these. But most of us have remained quiet,
What does your literacy block look like? It depends…
January 29, 2024
Schools all over the country are changing how reading is taught and they face two big questions: Decisions about what will be taught, when, and for how many minutes will determine the daily experience of students, and how much they’ll learn in school. Instructional time is limited, so building classroom schedules requires a series of choices that ultimately reflect our values. Looking back at my old schedules, I can see
Grasping for Meaning: What it’s Like to Struggle with Reading Comprehension
November 17, 2023
I thought experiencing reading difficulty of our own could help us relate to the comprehension challenges that our students face, so I planned a professional development session for the teachers at my school. To select a text to share, I followed the parameters we often use when choosing passages for students: But also, it was really hard. I prepared a lesson by drafting questions, collecting kid-friendly/teacher-friendly definitions for the challenging
When Language Is a Wall
October 16, 2023
When I began to learn about phonics instruction, I saw spelling puzzles in words I’d never noticed before, and I gained appreciation for the difficulty of learning to decode. Now, as an increasing number of students at my school can read accurately, the challenge of comprehension is looming large. It’s hard to identify potential barriers to comprehension when students read a text we ourselves can easily understand. And it’s harder
New (School) Year’s Resolutions
August 3, 2023
Perfect Isn’t Possible I love the bustle of a new school year. In the days before school starts, I organize and label absolutely everything, from the books in my classroom library to the blocks of time in my planbook. I remember and laugh at my grandma’s joke– “Everything’s perfect until the kids come!”– but still I spend hours color coding and alphabetizing. Kids will doodle on their notebooks, glue sticks
