Reading
When It Comes to Teaching Reading, When Will We Get It Right?
This summer, it seems like nobody took time off from the debate about how best to teach children to read. Emily Hanford’s latest documentary explores…
My Kid Had Tons of Background Knowledge, But He Couldn’t Read Without Learning Phonics
When our son was born, my husband and I knew a lot about how to prepare him to be a reader. We knew how to…
10 Summer Book Recommendations for Teachers, by Teachers
Everybody loves to give teachers their ideas for a great summer reading list. But what happens when teachers themselves do the choosing? Now that we’re…
How a Dozen Immigrant Parents Organized to Transform Literacy in Their District
Parents’ love for their children is the single greatest—and most underutilized—natural resource in education. I learned this firsthand as a son. My parents escaped political…
Have We Been Paying Too Much Attention to Girls in School at the Expense of Boys?
Legendary actress Meryl Streep recently garnered a considerable amount of media attention during a Vanity Fair panel about the second season of HBO’s series “Big…
How Teachers and Families Can Help Students Build Reading Fluency Over the Summer
Summer is a time for trying new things. Summer can also be a time for falling backward on academic skills like reading fluency. Research shows…
It Cost Nearly $250K to Teach My Son to Read. Here’s How to Do Better for Less.
My formerly illiterate fourth-grade son is now an eighth-grader at The Windward School for Children with Dyslexia, where he learned to read. Next year, he…
It’s Going to Take More Than a Black History Month Report to See Racial Equity in Our Schools
Black History Month provides a calendar-driven chance for students and teachers to talk about Black History. But it can easily become a way of tokenizing…
The Best Part of Teaching Is When You Succeed in Engaging Your Students’ Mind, Body and Spirit
My favorite book in the world is “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and it is special for me to share that book with my students. They…
I Always Write About How Hard Teaching Is But I Really Do Love It
Once, forever ago, I wrote a tweet bemoaning how many stories out there were about how much teaching sucks, and all the reasons people left…
