Natalie, have you ever considered John McWhorter for a podcast or interview of some kind? He’s already a huge proponent of phonics to help Black children, and has off-hand expressed disappointment for Education not being a better equalizer. I bet he would find your work enlightening!
Lizzie -- If you have a line on how to get in touch with John McWhorter, let me know! I've tried sending him a couple of emails over the past year or so, including after the piece you link to, but haven't received a response.
Twitter? Might be more noticeable than the email hordes. Could your publisher matchmake through his publisher? Unfortunately I’m just a plebeian fan of you both.
Phonics is the start, but Content is king. That’s why we built title specific, lexile leveled, content connections for 500 popular k-5 titles, included with the two million books we have gifted to date, and make them available for educators. Content Connections include four post book activities: like text-to-self, text-to-text, text-to-world, and creativity.
That’s why The Library of Congress recognized #kidsreadnow as 2022 literacy innovator.
I find what little I know about your thoughts on reading and writing research insightful and helpful, and I'll likely buy one or more of your books. I must admit, however, that I am put off by your insistence that our response to the pandemic had no effect on educational progress. I saw my extremely privileged kindergartener stagnate for many months, and I can't imagine that the effects on poor kids who were forced to endure Zoom school (without parents with time to closely supervise and/or tutor or hire tutors) were anything less than catastrophic.
Your point seems to be that we have long-standing issues with pedagogy and achievement, and I'm with you all the way. I just wish you could make that point without exonerating highly controversial deviations from educational norms with consequences we've yet to fully comprehend.
First, thanks for the kind words. Second, I think you've misinterpreted what I'm saying, and I apologize if I phrased anything in a way that was misleading. Of COURSE the pandemic had an effect on academic progress--a negative one -- and the impact was undoubtedly greater for students at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum. I've said that elsewhere, perhaps more clearly.
What I'm saying in this piece is a response to the idea that we WERE making progress in reading scores, and then the pandemic came along and reversed that progress. In fact, we weren't making progress BEFORE the pandemic--and then the pandemic made things much worse. My point is that we can't afford to just go back to what we were doing with reading instruction before the pandemic. If it wasn't working for many kids then, it's certainly not going to be enough to catch them up to where they should be now.
Thanks for being kind enough to reply and clarify your position. I will delete my original comment since I seem to have misinterpreted your statements/implications (likely due to lazy reading on my part - ironic given the subject matter, I know).
Thank you for this. This makes sense. Unlike other states, we had little disruption to attendance at schools in our district in Tennessee. The state governor wants districts to provide summer schools with the threat of holding children back in third grade to make up for poor reading levels. There is no discussion of what is being taught and the district is obviously on the defensive. We do have the curricula you have endorsed, Wit & Wisdom. I have got a first grader here and I'm disappointed in myself that I didn't investigate earlier how dark and depressing this is. Teachers are skipping pages that contain the 'bad bits'. I also wonder if testing and scores at an elementary are useful.
Natalie, have you ever considered John McWhorter for a podcast or interview of some kind? He’s already a huge proponent of phonics to help Black children, and has off-hand expressed disappointment for Education not being a better equalizer. I bet he would find your work enlightening!
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/27/opinion/racism-test.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Lizzie -- If you have a line on how to get in touch with John McWhorter, let me know! I've tried sending him a couple of emails over the past year or so, including after the piece you link to, but haven't received a response.
Twitter? Might be more noticeable than the email hordes. Could your publisher matchmake through his publisher? Unfortunately I’m just a plebeian fan of you both.
Surely Dana Goldstein at the NYT could get y’all connected via whoever his editor is there.
Phonics is the start, but Content is king. That’s why we built title specific, lexile leveled, content connections for 500 popular k-5 titles, included with the two million books we have gifted to date, and make them available for educators. Content Connections include four post book activities: like text-to-self, text-to-text, text-to-world, and creativity.
That’s why The Library of Congress recognized #kidsreadnow as 2022 literacy innovator.
I find what little I know about your thoughts on reading and writing research insightful and helpful, and I'll likely buy one or more of your books. I must admit, however, that I am put off by your insistence that our response to the pandemic had no effect on educational progress. I saw my extremely privileged kindergartener stagnate for many months, and I can't imagine that the effects on poor kids who were forced to endure Zoom school (without parents with time to closely supervise and/or tutor or hire tutors) were anything less than catastrophic.
Your point seems to be that we have long-standing issues with pedagogy and achievement, and I'm with you all the way. I just wish you could make that point without exonerating highly controversial deviations from educational norms with consequences we've yet to fully comprehend.
First, thanks for the kind words. Second, I think you've misinterpreted what I'm saying, and I apologize if I phrased anything in a way that was misleading. Of COURSE the pandemic had an effect on academic progress--a negative one -- and the impact was undoubtedly greater for students at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum. I've said that elsewhere, perhaps more clearly.
What I'm saying in this piece is a response to the idea that we WERE making progress in reading scores, and then the pandemic came along and reversed that progress. In fact, we weren't making progress BEFORE the pandemic--and then the pandemic made things much worse. My point is that we can't afford to just go back to what we were doing with reading instruction before the pandemic. If it wasn't working for many kids then, it's certainly not going to be enough to catch them up to where they should be now.
Thanks for being kind enough to reply and clarify your position. I will delete my original comment since I seem to have misinterpreted your statements/implications (likely due to lazy reading on my part - ironic given the subject matter, I know).
Thank you for this. This makes sense. Unlike other states, we had little disruption to attendance at schools in our district in Tennessee. The state governor wants districts to provide summer schools with the threat of holding children back in third grade to make up for poor reading levels. There is no discussion of what is being taught and the district is obviously on the defensive. We do have the curricula you have endorsed, Wit & Wisdom. I have got a first grader here and I'm disappointed in myself that I didn't investigate earlier how dark and depressing this is. Teachers are skipping pages that contain the 'bad bits'. I also wonder if testing and scores at an elementary are useful.