Literacy Blogs

Teacher question: Our district is exploring and embracing Personalized Learning. We have a committee that has been going to professional development all year and a small group that is trying this out in their classrooms. Next year another group of teachers will be brought on to implement personalized learning and mentor under those trying it this year.   Coinciding with this, our elementary building will be undergoing renovation and a committee has been working on plans. Construction is to begin next school year. We have not seen the final plans. They will not show them to the staff yet. The guidelines for their ...

Why do you support the use of basal readers for teaching reading? Isn’t it the teachers that make the difference, not the textbooks?           What an peculiar—but all-too-common—question.            What has led to this weird belief that schools can have either textbooks or good teachers? That investments in teacher development and textbook adoption are opposites? Or, that the good teachers will run screaming from the room upon textbook purchases?            The real issue isn’t whether teachers or programs matter, but whether students are best served by a corps of good teachers ...

  I was making a presentation about how to raise reading achievement. I was taking my audience through research on what needed to be taught and how it needed to be taught if kids were to do as well as possible. I was telling about my experiences as director of reading of the Chicago Public Schools at a time when my teachers raised reading achievement. When I finished, a teacher approached me. “What do you think is the most important variable in higher reading achievement?”         My answer was, “The amount of teaching—academic experience—that we provide to our children.”       ...

Our university held its graduation ceremony Thursday night. That means that it is almost time for your summer break, and man, have you earned it! I'm sure you're dog tired--the good kind of tired I hope where you can barely see straight, but through it you are proud of how things went for the kids.   And with this terrible economy many districts are laying off teachers (the worst I've seen in my whole career). All the more reason to kick back and take it easy.   But you are a professional teacher. And what is summer vacation for your kids, should really be ...