Today’s Literacy Headlines

COVID-19 forced Keriann Wilmot’s son to trade his classroom for a computer. It was a tough transition for a 10-year-old with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. “It was a different environment for him,” Wilmot says. “He wasn’t used to this kind of work from school coming in the format of an email in his Chromebook every single day.” Her son would avoid math and writing and instead go straight to his favorite subjects: science and social studies. But even then, online assignments could be a problem. Wilmot was much better prepared than most parents to help her son. She’d spent 20 years as an occupational therapist who specializes in helping children with ADHD and other learning disabilities. Even so, working with her own child was tough.

In the collection development department at the Fort Worth (TX) Public Library, we devote a lot of time and energy to building collections that are as diverse, equitable, and inclusive as possible. We have many discussions about topics including the Diversity in Children’s Books surveys put out by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC), #OwnVoices, and how to create a catalog that will help staff and patrons find diverse materials. Building and maintaining inclusive collections is only one piece of the puzzle for libraries seeking to promote equity and inclusion. What happens if you build an inclusive collection but nobody knows it’s there or how to use it? This question led us to develop diversity, equity, and inclusion training throughout our system.

Melissa Malzkuhn is the founder and creative director of Gallaudet University’s Motion Light Lab. Since 2013 her team has worked with Deaf storytellers and artists to create bilingual stories for their VL2 ASL Storybook Apps. But with schools across the country closed amid the COVID-19 outbreak, Deaf children have less access to such stories. As schools across the country moved to distance learning, Malzkuhn’s team opened free access to their storybook apps. They weren’t alone in their efforts. Educators and advocates across the Deaf community have curated lessons, created storytime videos and organized events to support Deaf students’ literacy. Here are six ASL resources to help Deaf students engage with books and storytelling during distance learning.

Colorado students in kindergarten through third grade soon will have access to lessons in reading, math, science, and art through their television sets. Gov. Jared Polis announced the launch of “Colorado Classroom: Learn with Me at Home” on Monday. The programming airs for at least 15 weeks on Rocky Mountain PBS. Developed in partnership with the Colorado Department of Education and the Colorado Education Initiative, the programming for young students builds on a summer program focused on literacy. The lessons, with a different theme each week, will reach families even if they don’t have internet access. Every Friday will feature interactive science lessons developed with help from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The lessons will be broadcast in English with Spanish subtitles.

As education organizations and initiatives such as Teaching Tolerance, the Zinn Education Project, Black Lives Matter at School, the Pulitzer Center’s 1619 Project Curriculum and others strive to give educators the tools to teach anti-bias and antiracism, educators are grappling with how to implement these resources in early grades. For Katie Cryan Leary, the principal of the newly opened Magnolia Elementary in Seattle Public Schools, creating an antiracist, anti-bias school can be a messy, uncomfortable journey. That’s especially true in a district that, in the 19 years she’s been working there, has committed to racial equity but still struggles to serve the needs of a wide range of students. To her, antiracism education in elementary school starts with students’ awareness of themselves, of others and of how those interactions play out. She believes that social emotional learning — giving kids the tools to manage and express their feelings — is the heart of race and equity work.

When this fifth-grade teacher shifted his school newspaper online, he found that students were motivated to produce high-quality work for an authentic audience—and felt more connected as a community. Get do’s and don’ts for a virtual newspaper and how to get it launched.

Across the U.S., parents are weighing agonizing choices about in-person versus virtual schooling this fall. Many parents are struggling to support their children through remote learning while they themselves have full-time jobs or shift work with unpredictable schedules that can upend family lives. But once the question of how children will learn this year is answered, another equally pressing one arises: Where, exactly, will this learning take place? During this pandemic, Leah Dela Cruz has taken the idea of learning anywhere to heart. Ms. Dela Cruz lives with her husband and their two children, Lauren, 6, and Rocco, 16 months, in a two-bedroom, 750-square foot apartment in San Mateo, Calif. With the living room as her only option for a classroom, Ms. Dela Cruz gave away a big table and a bookshelf and created two tidy spaces, one on the left with a TV tray as a desk for Lauren and one on the right with a play area for Rocco. Lauren uses an old iPad for distance learning, and arts and crafts activities are done with simple materials like Popsicle sticks and colored pencils.

While intergenerational reading has always involved a valuable shared experience on many levels, the pandemic has drawn more people to all-ages book clubs and programs, many organized virtually by nonprofits and libraries. Virtual programming can involve a wider crowd, and the crushing events of 2020 have prompted meaningful explorations of books focusing on equity, racism, and family, historical or contemporary. The Reading into History program at the New York Historical Society (NYHS) is one example: it gives “kids and their parents equal footing to be interested in something,” says Alice Stevenson, vice president and director of the DiMenna Children’s History Museum at NYHS.

Student collaboration is critical. Partner reading builds fluency. Sharing manipulatives to retell a story strengthens language development and reading comprehension. The ability to share the pen with another, communicate clearly, and problem solve in teams has so many benefits. Students need collaborative work now more than ever. Social distancing is taking its toll on student learning, particularly the kind that comes when students work in groups. But how do we bring collaborative learning into a virtual setting this year? I’ve been meeting with teachers around the United States virtually this summer to support them with the implementation of a literacy curriculum that we use at my school, which calls for authentic collaborative work and rich student discourse. In the course of these meetings, I’ve come up with a few ideas for bringing collaboration into a virtual space.

Twenty-eight educators share their thoughts and ideas about what worked for them in the spring, what they’re doing this fall, what worries them, what heartens them and what helps them. We know that this post can’t begin to address all the issues. Some teachers in the United States are going back in person, others will be working with a hybrid model, and some still don’t know for sure. And though these tips focus on engaging middle and high school students online, most educators we know are chiefly worried about those students who don’t have reliable internet at all. Teachers, we hope you’ll help by posting your own comments, and sharing any experiences or tips you have. We hope it will be useful, too, to read the related Times articles that provide the illustrations throughout, such as the May piece “‘I’m Teaching Into a Vacuum’: 14 Educators on Quarantine Learning.”

Out September 1, Bookmarks highlights children’s books written by Black authors, about the Black experience. In each episode, a different celebrity reads one of the books aloud. Sometimes, they visit their own work—as in the case of Lupita Nyong’o, who brings her gorgeously illustrated book Sulwe to life. Then, they follow up the reading with a few thought-provoking questions. Think of it as a book club for parents and tots. With each episode clocking in at five minutes, Bookmarks lends itself to becoming your go-to bedtime story resource. The 12-episode series is designed to simultaneously cultivate young readers, and promote diverse voices in children’s literature—which is exactly the goal of its host, teenage activist Marley Dias.

A lot can happen in two years time, but when you are Marley Dias — founder and author of the social media campaign #1000BlackGirlBooks — somehow that’s on a whole different scale. The last time we talked to Dias, the West Orange, New Jersey, resident was promoting her book, “Marley Dias Gets It Done (And So Can You!).” In the book, she wrote about youth activism, social justice and using social media to make positive changes in communities. Today, the 15-year-old is talking about her new Netflix project, “Bookmarks: Celebrating Black Voices,” a collection of 12 five-minute episodes featuring Black celebrities and artists reading children’s books by Black authors that highlight the Black experience.

As students shift to remote learning, superintendents nationwide are laying off thousands of paraprofessionals, hourly, mostly low-paid workers often tasked to help students with disabilities. Paraprofessional groups, which have quickly organized protests to denounce the layoffs, have argued their members will be critical in the coming months to help students catch up academically and teachers manage oversized, virtual classrooms. They also argue that paraprofessionals are core elements of special education students’ Individualized Education Programs and that districts could now risk legal challenges from parent advocacy groups.

A mother-son duo is hoping you notice something a little different the next time you visit Little Free Library in Dallas. Rachel and Elliott Koppa launched an effort this summer to put 10 diverse books in Little Free Libraries across the city. “We are trying to hit all 97 of the registered Little Free Libraries in the city of Dallas,” Rachel Koppa said. “We need to see all kinds of different races, and cultures, and religions, and ethnicities so that it broadens our horizons and help us be more open and understanding to the world that we live in,” Rachel said. “I want Elliott to grow up in a kind world.

The language we use when communicating with families is more crucial than ever. As educators, we are doing ourselves and our families a huge disservice by alienating them with unfamiliar words, acronyms, and educational jargon. Since family involvement impacts school achievement, examining our communications is even more critical, as many reopening plans include some form of online learning. I thought about the endless supply of acronyms that educators use throughout the school year and how we might be alienating families by not being clear, explicit, and transparent in our language choices when communicating with them. Here are a few acronyms, words, and phrases I hear being used often, with examples of what we could say to improve communication with families as we dive into virtual learning.

New research shows that it often takes three years and visits to multiple providers before Black children are diagnosed with autism, denying them a critical opportunity for therapy when it’s likely to be most effective. Autism can be reliably diagnosed before age 2, but most children aren’t flagged until after age 4. Black children, however, are nearly 5½ years old, on average, before they receive an autism diagnosis, according to findings published online Monday in the journal Pediatrics. “This study reveals major roadblocks to receiving a diagnosis of autism, which has significant consequences for young children and their families,” said John N. Constantino, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at Washington University in St. Louis who led the research.

Staring at a blank page can be daunting for anyone with a writing assignment. As one writes, there are all kinds of rules to adhere to: grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc. In school, writing can feel like a chore if it’s part of a class assignment or a topic the student doesn’t care about. But for those who have experienced the thrill of writing fan fiction, there’s a certain flow that can feel liberating. Fan fiction is a type of writing that builds upon or takes liberties with existing stories. Writers can create alternate endings for stories, create parallel worlds, develop side characters more deeply or cross over characters from different stories. Some of the most popular fan fic subjects are Harry Potter, Sherlock Holmes and Marvel comics.

The challenges of getting students to participate have intensified during remote learning, we’ve heard from many teachers. Digital platforms can create added communication barriers by making it hard to know when to talk, for example, or how to read subtle but important elements of discourse like a person’s body language and facial expressions. Additionally, online discussions are often hindered by variability in students’ access to technology and by privacy concerns, and consequently many teachers have had to rely on students’ submitting work over isolated channels like email, which can leave back-and-forth between peers (and between students and the teacher) by the wayside. To find out how to improve student discussions and participation in online learning, we culled through hundreds of comments on social media and followed up with more than 20 educators to see how they tackled the challenge last spring. Teachers offered a range of smart strategies, both synchronous and asynchronous, to integrate the values and the voices of all kids—even the quietest or those with disrupted schedules—into their classes this fall.

As part of a legal settlement in a class action lawsuit, the state of Michigan plans to establish a $9 million special education fund to improve education for children affected by the Flint water crisis. The money, part of a $600 million settlement announced Thursday by the state, will be used to strengthen services and supports for Flint children who were harmed by lead poisoning and fund improvements for special education services to all students with disabilities in public schools in Flint and Genesee County. Research has linked lead toxicity to learning disabilities and poor classroom performance.

There are ways to mitigate the damage that will inevitably be done to students as the pandemic rages on. Many are rooted in centuries-old practices and common sense but require considerable planning and finesse to make them work.  All the approaches depend on having a few key elements already in place: a solid curriculum; a commitment to grade-level teaching; and strategies to engage students, including tracking them down and contacting them if they aren’t showing up for remote or hybrid learning. By far the most effective intervention for students who have fallen behind—intensive tutoring—has high start-up costs. While there are ways to lower some of them, severe budget cuts could put it out of reach for all but a fraction of districts. For this installment on how to address students’ learning losses, Education Week interviewed two dozen researchers, teachers, and principals, and reviewed hundreds of pages of empirical studies and planning documents to identify interventions that are well supported by research—and other approaches that are unlikely to move the needle. 

Rolling Wi-Fi-enabled school buses into neighborhoods and distributing personal hotspots to families were part of districts’ rapid responses to getting families online once schools closed in the spring. But such programs have limitations and don’t always provide students the high-speed connections they need for Zoom classes and completing assignments — especially if there are multiple students in the home. For example, the Louisa County Public Schools, located about halfway between the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., and Richmond, has received attention for its innovative Wireless on Wheels, or WOW, program — a small fleet of solar-powered hotspots on trailers, stationed in church parking lots and other open areas. Students will begin building the Wi-Fi carts in shop classes for some hands-on experience. Users, however, have to be within 150 feet to get online, and the district is still using buses to transport students to the hotspots. While the problem permeates much of rural America, the lack of broadband can even be an issue for students living in tech hubs.

Cory Streets, a special-education teacher outside Cleveland, created the type of space many remote workers crave these days: a fully-equipped, work-from-home haven. In his case, a classroom, in his backyard shed. Streets hoped he could produce something approaching normalcy for him and his students in the months of virtual learning that lie ahead. “I wanted it to feel like a classroom,” Streets said as he sat in the middle of his newly completed backyard creation. “So when the kids log onto Zoom it can feel like a real class. It can feel normal, as much as possible.” Streets is a Moderate-Intensive Intervention Specialist at Lakewood High School, with a focus on students with cognitive disabilities and autism spectrum disorder. This fall, he is set to teach math, science, English, social studies, music and reading.

Having spent our careers doing research on student motivation and learning with technology, we recommend these three strategies: (1) go out of your way to build relationships; (2) stress the relevance of what students are learning; and (3) establish new routines.

It’s not easy to teach young children remotely. These strategies can help make instruction accessible and engaging—for students and their families. Get 8 tips for home learning in preschool from an early childhood special education teacher.

All Classroom Q&A posts on The Inclusive Classroom (from the past nine years!) are described and linked to in this compilation post. Examples include four educators who consider how to provide inclusive learning opportunities during the school closure crisis (including by keeping IEP goals in mind and by keeping things simple), making an inclusive classroom work, and ways to be a successful co-teacher.

Kwame Alexander―poet, Newbery and Caldecott medal-winning, best-selling author, and founding editor of Versify, an imprint of HMH Books for Young People―has spent years visiting elementary and middle schools to share his love of writing with students. But Alexander wanted to reach more kids than he can with school visits and to teach young people that writing is cool and inspire them to tell their stories. With that goal in mind, he partnered with education technology company Age of Learning to create WordPlay, a digital series that combines live action and animation.

Poor regions across the globe where internet access is scarce are turning to television to reach students. That strategy could also help in wealthy countries that have focused on online classes. While television lessons are not as valuable as online interactions with teachers and other students, experts say, educational broadcasts do pay dividends for children’s academic progress, their success in the job market and even their social development. To make lessons less passive and more effective, many of the lessons being broadcast now use all the tools of professional studios, like eye-pleasing sets, script writers, 3-D animation, multicamera shoots, graphics and even related smartphone apps.

In April, the NWEA, a nonprofit assessment organization, published research showing some students could start school this fall nearly one year behind where they would normally be, part of a phenomenon referred to as the “Covid slide.” Not all students will be affected equally: Other research predicts that the losses will probably be greatest for low-income and Black and Hispanic students. Nationally, educators and officials have floated one possible solution: year-round school. Under this model, which has existed in parts of the country for decades, schools operate with shorter, more frequent breaks throughout the year, rather than one lengthy summer vacation. While research on the model’s effectiveness is mixed, proponents argue that it keeps vulnerable students from falling farther behind and ensures that students benefit more consistently from school meals and other services.

“Can you give an example of an online lesson that’s effective for students with disabilities?” That’s the question Elizabeth Barker has fielded over and over as schools have prepared to reopen. But it’s the one question that Barker, a special education expert with NWEA, a nonprofit data and assessment provider, can’t answer. Because students in special education, by definition, require individualized support, there is no such thing as a model lesson. She does, however, point to four ingredients for effective special education during in-person schooling that should guide educators as they look for ways to engage students with disabilities in distance learning.

The national shift to distance learning this spring left many of the nation’s nearly 5 million English-learner students shut out of the learning process—without internet, without language support, and without the devices they needed to participate in online education. The experience was tough even in places where schools found ways to connect with English-learners. Now, as schools begin to reopen, districts should redouble their efforts to make up for lost time, a new report from the Council of the Great City Schools suggests. The report urges districts to pay close attention to how they choose and use technology and assess what skills students have learned and lost since schools shut down. It also emphasizes the importance of: family engagement for parents and other relatives who are not fluent in English; professional development that emphasizes effective teaching strategies for all educators who work with English-learners; and rethinking how schools deploy English-learner specialists to ensure that students have ample opportunity for one-on-one or small-group learning support during online-only classes.

As a school year like no other gets underway, the laws surrounding individualized education programs remain unchanged and experts say parents should fight for the services their kids need. While the details may look different — with IEP meetings occurring virtually rather than in person, for example — special education advocates and attorneys say that families should approach the IEP process much like they would in any other year. Denise Marshall, CEO of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, is reminding parents that the whole concept of the IEP is that services for students with disabilities should be individualized. The IEP team should consider the student’s present levels of performance, needs, goals and how to meet them before making any determinations about placements.

Creating a strong classroom culture is priority number one during the first weeks of school. This year should not be any different—in fact, creating connections and a sense of belonging has never been more important. And yet, as coronavirus numbers soar, many schools are opting to return at least partly to remote learning in the fall. So, how can we create a positive classroom culture when we can’t even see our students face-to-face? It’s going to take a mixture of adapting the old tried-and-true beginning-of-the-year traditions to digital media and creating whole new practices and activities.

Some U.S. schools have already begun the 2020-21 academic year, with thousands more set to launch in the next few weeks. Americans would be well-served to look beyond the country’s borders for signs of how school reopenings might go and lessons they might learn. In the United States, the volley of conflicting guidance documents and policy recommendations for safe schooling during the COVID-19 pandemic has been difficult to parse, and tensions are high as the stakes for key decisions have life-and-death implications. Numerous countries managed to reopen school buildings earlier this year, and the resulting successes and failures are instructive. The Kaiser Family Foundation published a side-by-side comparison of the rate of positive COVID-19 tests on the day of school reopenings in 13 different countries. All but two had a national positivity rate below 4 percent on the day schools reopened.

Three educators offer tips for online instruction, ranging from keeping videos short (3-5 minutes) to laying out an agenda at the beginning of each class.

A generation of education policy has been shaped in part by an extended discussion around racial differences, and the lingua franca of that dialogue is testing data. Achievement gaps are at the heart of school improvement initiatives led by states, cities, universities and philanthropies, and civil rights groups like the NAACP and the Urban League have organized vigilantly around the exam performance of minority children. But there is new reason to think that the persistent focus on testing and disparities may yield unintended ill effects. An experimental study conducted by David Quinn, a professor at the University of Southern California, found that media coverage of the achievement gap “may have increased viewers’ implicit stereotyping of Black students as less competent than [white] students.” The negative perceptions were formed in response to a television news segment just two minutes long. The research comes at a time when prominent thinkers are re-examining the logic of the achievement gap and its starring role in education debates. While most believe that assessment should continue to inform school evaluations and accountability, some question whether the construction places responsibility for disappointing test scores on the heads of students themselves.

New children’s books published to mark the 19th Amendment’s 100th anniversary provide a wider lens than Alice Paul and dig deeper than “Girls Rule!” It was with trepidation that I tackled a new crop of children’s books published to mark the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment. When the story of the long fight for women’s enfranchisement has been told popularly, it has too often been presented as flat celebration — all the complexities and nastiness, the racism and classism, the defining incompleteness of the project pressed out to make a neat fist-in-the-air tale of victory. If it’s so hard to honestly address the ways in which injustices have been replicated within movements for justice, how can those contours be effectively communicated in children’s books? Especially children’s books that are designed to inspire?