Love this. On the other side, can I pose a genuine question? Is the science of learning becoming too technocratic? One of the big themes that comes out of SOL influencing is “you’re not don’t it right” which seems a shame when people are willingly on a good path. Teaching practice is never quite good enough. Yes, be critical and motivated by a desire to be better, but if the pendulum swings towards the unachievable, teachers of all persuasions will start to feel dissatisfied.
I've said for years that every good idea in education becomes a bad idea when it hardens into orthodoxy. But I could also have said "when it becomes a technocratic plaything."
Another fantastic article. You have a way of bringing out the things no one else is looking at. I resonate so strongly with everything you write and I'm so grateful for your voice out there!
As a former teacher that left after 16 years- I hoped to teach for 20+. This is so true. I worked at a great school, supportive administrators, great colleagues, and I was paid well with good benefits. I left for a variety of reasons but many of what you described here.
Hi Robert, I'm one of those teachers who liked the job, worked hard at it, and then left. Why? I'm not sure, but I think it was the lack of respect for the field from the world at large. No one ever complimented me for being a teacher.
Which may help explain why I became a writer. People are awed by writers, we have clout in our communities.
Might we find sincere ways to celebrate classroom teachers, to give them kudos and prizes?
Are you THE Joy Hakim? The Story of US? I LOVE your work--and now I feel stupid, because I only mentioned it in a footnote on one of my recent posts and your books are worth more than a footnote! I've used your work often with my middle schoolers!! (https://laurenbrownoned.substack.com/p/the-power-of-reading-aloud-in-history)
Honor? Geez. I'm lucky to still be able to work, although writing doesn't take much in the way of gymnastic talents. The new series--copublished by Candlewick and MIT Press--uses science, and its stories, to deal with reading and its sibling skills. I've been lucky, the books are gorgeous.
I left teaching after the 2019-2020 school year. It was something I had been considering for awhile but COVID was my final straw. I was a SpEd teacher. I worked with kids in grades 1-5 and had over 35 kids on my caseload because I also had to do our 504s for kids with Dyslexia. There were not enough hours in the day for me to meet the needs of my students by providing their services, writing and documenting IEPs, holding IEP meetings, meeting and planning with the gen ed teachers, making sure my 1 para knew how to help support the students, and planning out my own lessons and interventions. This doesn't include time for me to eat or use the bathroom. We are burning our educators out. More funding for schools = more teachers = more collaboration = more support for students = less teacher burnout = less teachers leaving.
I loved teaching. I loved working with the kids; especially the "difficult" ones. But there was nothing left at the end of the day for me or my family.
I had a master’s in education but no clue how to manage classrooms of middle school students. But I could tell ya all about Vygogsky and social constructionism. Then I felt like the heavens opened up on me when I stumbled upon Harry Wong’s The First day of School. Aha! There is wisdom that works and I immediately began implementing it. Why was this not in Teaching 101? And don’t get me started on how little I knew about teaching reading to kids who were, on average, 2 years behind.
28 years and counting here 🤚🏼 with lots of stories from the last (nearly) three decades... we need to chat! I'm INFURIATED 😡 by this story and every Floridian should be in an uproar as well. It's another shining example of spineless Florida elected officials, whimpering like lackeys at the feet of entitled parents who throw tantrums when they don't get their way. Yet we wonder why their offspring are a bunch of snowflakes? I love (not) the way the dimwits "offer" the very professional educator the option to reapply to the district (THAT SHE HAS WORKED IN FOR 12 YEARS) in the future!????
Our district's "professional " standards did something similar to my teaching partner of 20+ years! It's been awful and we've been fighting it for 5 years!
I guess I will die saying this--probably unheeded. Yet,...
We can't ask what tools are missing from the teachers' toolboxes until the profession has tools to store those answers.
Other professions have had much stronger processes for this. Which haven't always worked, but worked better than what has happened in education.
Teaching is actually more like the software profession than it resembles like other longstanding professions. In part because historically its main professional channel was not a professional org, but a political pac: the NEA. Yet, also because it's so hard to know what needs an evidence base and what doesn't. In medicine, if you put it in your body, it should go through some trials. Not so clear that's true with everything that teachers teach. And the med schools were more aligned with the science & engineering side of campus, while the schools of education were run like humanities departments.
To solve these problems, teachers need tools more like those of software developers. Specifically, open source communities, built with open source knowledge management tools.
I bring some skepticism to your idea of building an open source repository. I think that's what Reading Universe is trying to do (https://readinguniverse.org/), and I don't know any teachers who are using it to refine their practice. If you build it, how do you know that they will come?
At least in my experience, it's essential to bring what you're offering directly to teachers. You can't expect them to have the time to sift through a database of videos or search results. You need to meet them where they are--whether that's virtually in a Facebook group that's centered around the curricula they've been mandated to teach or in a mandatory PL session on Wednesday afternoon.
Teaching jobs are not like developer jobs--teachers don't have time during the school day to use Stack Overflow to navigate a tricky bug in their code.
So true. It is terribly difficult to find time to read such things in the middle of the school day or school year. I know the "building the plane while flying it" has become a tiresome metaphor, so forgive me, but it is a little like asking teachers to read the insightful manuals while they're busy flying.
Yes! Lauren, this is exactly why I am so adamant about building resources through open source communities. (And I realize that probably no one reading this has ever participated in an open source community.)
Situation today: "Read my book on teaching Fluency." "Read my book on Cognitive Load theory". "Listen to my hour + 20 podcast with the author of a study on how teaching writing strategies offer a 0.7 standard deviation improvement in comprehension test scores." "Attend my 90 minute webinar on
Oral Language and Vocabulary Strategies to Develop Confident, Capable Learners on June 2 at 2 pm EST."
These things are all well and good on their own. I read these studies and listen to these podcasts. Yet they are not a solution for 3 million teachers. (Does the majority of teachers read more than one teaching book a year?)
Better solution: Extremely iterated and improved compilations of the best from all of those. That give teachers a well-vetted summary of the things they absolutely need most; in the most concise and explicit way; with further links to the evidence and deeper explanations behind them.
BTW, this is even more true for the trainers than for the 3 million teachers.
We tend to think that the average teacher trainer is like the ones in our feeds on X, on Substack, at researchEd. We're getting closer, but,...
Wow, you are so right-- since I came to Substack I have been blown away by all the great content here and have been writing my own stuff to contribute. It has led me to read some books (or at least buy/borrow them and start them) and listen to a bunch of podcasts (or at least cue them up with an intention to listen to them). I have a spreadsheet where I put links to articles that are mentioned that I will read "later." But who has the time? I'm curious about your solution--what it actually looks like? Because you're right, I have not participated in an open source community.
So,… someone built the Facebook groups? And no one was there before that?
I was with Donna in the very early days, and helped her take it from something she was struggling to keep up with to at least a more manageable group with multiple moderators, rules, docs, etc.
It and the groups that followed were a disruptive innovation that really launched the SOR movement!
Yet we know that those groups, and the advice that hurried teachers get, have begotten a new set of problems.
You’ve seen Seidenberg and many others talk about it.
I refer to that as SoR’s source of truth problem.
That is, on top of all the gigabytes of 60 years of research, what are the current best practices in Structured Literacy?
What’s the trail of evidence to back each one?
For what aspects do we not really have a single ‘best practice’?
Those questions got a lot of attention last summer. Before everyone jumped to the new shiny AI topic.
Great read - for a profession so dependent on reflection, there is very little reflection at an industry level. I suppose it’s easier to dismiss and pigeonhole any concerns as being from people who “aren’t cut out for teaching anyway”, rather than listen and act.
Great post. I think the point about theoretical versus practical knowledge is critical - I always picture Roland "Prez" Pryzbylewski in the Wire walking into his classroom for the first time trying to get the students's attention and he was a former cop. Reality hits quickly when you have a room of teenagers and no plan. You need to learn to pivot quickly or you will not survive. But school culture is huge also. And it can change quickly. Compare our systems to the most successful - Finland, Japan - and you can see that it can be done.
This is an insightful post. I haven't read anything like this before. I will add one other point which I have read many times before, so it's not original: talk to the people who didn't decided not even to try such a low-paying, poorly respected profession in the first place. The people at the top of their college classes at the top universities who would only consider teaching if they got the prestigious "Teach for America" placement as a stepping stone to doing something else more prestigious and better paying. Teachers need to be paid more, but at the same time, the profession and the training needs to change. And that's too much to ask to happen all at once. #pipedream #butstillhopeful
Love this - our nonprofit is an education impact incubator that empowers educators to build dream programs with support of our 65+ partners! Would love to connect around this!!
Love this. On the other side, can I pose a genuine question? Is the science of learning becoming too technocratic? One of the big themes that comes out of SOL influencing is “you’re not don’t it right” which seems a shame when people are willingly on a good path. Teaching practice is never quite good enough. Yes, be critical and motivated by a desire to be better, but if the pendulum swings towards the unachievable, teachers of all persuasions will start to feel dissatisfied.
I've said for years that every good idea in education becomes a bad idea when it hardens into orthodoxy. But I could also have said "when it becomes a technocratic plaything."
*doing it right
Another fantastic article. You have a way of bringing out the things no one else is looking at. I resonate so strongly with everything you write and I'm so grateful for your voice out there!
This makes my day. Thank you, Ms, Berquist!
You are spectacularly sensitive to the teacher's plight. You see us! Thank you for what you say and how you say it. Here's my contribution to the conversation: Stop Gaslighting Teachers (https://harriettjanetos.substack.com/p/stop-gaslighting-teachers?r=5spuf)
As a former teacher that left after 16 years- I hoped to teach for 20+. This is so true. I worked at a great school, supportive administrators, great colleagues, and I was paid well with good benefits. I left for a variety of reasons but many of what you described here.
I'm crawling towards year 20! I hope I'll make it :)
I wish you the best. We need excellent teachers that have experience.
Aw, thank you! I'm lucky to live in Washington state, where teachers are well paid. That sure makes a difference!
Hi Robert, I'm one of those teachers who liked the job, worked hard at it, and then left. Why? I'm not sure, but I think it was the lack of respect for the field from the world at large. No one ever complimented me for being a teacher.
Which may help explain why I became a writer. People are awed by writers, we have clout in our communities.
Might we find sincere ways to celebrate classroom teachers, to give them kudos and prizes?
Are you THE Joy Hakim? The Story of US? I LOVE your work--and now I feel stupid, because I only mentioned it in a footnote on one of my recent posts and your books are worth more than a footnote! I've used your work often with my middle schoolers!! (https://laurenbrownoned.substack.com/p/the-power-of-reading-aloud-in-history)
See above. THE Joy Hakim has written a new series--Discovering Life's Stories--available from MITeen Press.
I knew about your new series when I was writing my post about reading aloud. I'm thrilled for science teachers!
It is an honor to have THE Joy Hakim in my comments. How have you been?
Honor? Geez. I'm lucky to still be able to work, although writing doesn't take much in the way of gymnastic talents. The new series--copublished by Candlewick and MIT Press--uses science, and its stories, to deal with reading and its sibling skills. I've been lucky, the books are gorgeous.
I left teaching after the 2019-2020 school year. It was something I had been considering for awhile but COVID was my final straw. I was a SpEd teacher. I worked with kids in grades 1-5 and had over 35 kids on my caseload because I also had to do our 504s for kids with Dyslexia. There were not enough hours in the day for me to meet the needs of my students by providing their services, writing and documenting IEPs, holding IEP meetings, meeting and planning with the gen ed teachers, making sure my 1 para knew how to help support the students, and planning out my own lessons and interventions. This doesn't include time for me to eat or use the bathroom. We are burning our educators out. More funding for schools = more teachers = more collaboration = more support for students = less teacher burnout = less teachers leaving.
I loved teaching. I loved working with the kids; especially the "difficult" ones. But there was nothing left at the end of the day for me or my family.
Everything has been so much harder after that 2019-2020 school year!
This would be a great thing to share on the subreddit “teachersInTransition.” If their rules allow it…
I had a master’s in education but no clue how to manage classrooms of middle school students. But I could tell ya all about Vygogsky and social constructionism. Then I felt like the heavens opened up on me when I stumbled upon Harry Wong’s The First day of School. Aha! There is wisdom that works and I immediately began implementing it. Why was this not in Teaching 101? And don’t get me started on how little I knew about teaching reading to kids who were, on average, 2 years behind.
28 years and counting here 🤚🏼 with lots of stories from the last (nearly) three decades... we need to chat! I'm INFURIATED 😡 by this story and every Floridian should be in an uproar as well. It's another shining example of spineless Florida elected officials, whimpering like lackeys at the feet of entitled parents who throw tantrums when they don't get their way. Yet we wonder why their offspring are a bunch of snowflakes? I love (not) the way the dimwits "offer" the very professional educator the option to reapply to the district (THAT SHE HAS WORKED IN FOR 12 YEARS) in the future!????
As if! I can't even with these people 🙄
Yay for 28 years!! Go you :)
Our district's "professional " standards did something similar to my teaching partner of 20+ years! It's been awful and we've been fighting it for 5 years!
I guess I will die saying this--probably unheeded. Yet,...
We can't ask what tools are missing from the teachers' toolboxes until the profession has tools to store those answers.
Other professions have had much stronger processes for this. Which haven't always worked, but worked better than what has happened in education.
Teaching is actually more like the software profession than it resembles like other longstanding professions. In part because historically its main professional channel was not a professional org, but a political pac: the NEA. Yet, also because it's so hard to know what needs an evidence base and what doesn't. In medicine, if you put it in your body, it should go through some trials. Not so clear that's true with everything that teachers teach. And the med schools were more aligned with the science & engineering side of campus, while the schools of education were run like humanities departments.
To solve these problems, teachers need tools more like those of software developers. Specifically, open source communities, built with open source knowledge management tools.
This is an example: https://sorquizzes.org/QuizSetView
We invest billions in storing education thoughts in journals and on blog posts, podcasts, videos, etc. It's all horribly non-navigable.
A few (low-cost!) experiments in storing teaching knowledge the way software engineers store professional knowledge will go far.
I bring some skepticism to your idea of building an open source repository. I think that's what Reading Universe is trying to do (https://readinguniverse.org/), and I don't know any teachers who are using it to refine their practice. If you build it, how do you know that they will come?
At least in my experience, it's essential to bring what you're offering directly to teachers. You can't expect them to have the time to sift through a database of videos or search results. You need to meet them where they are--whether that's virtually in a Facebook group that's centered around the curricula they've been mandated to teach or in a mandatory PL session on Wednesday afternoon.
Teaching jobs are not like developer jobs--teachers don't have time during the school day to use Stack Overflow to navigate a tricky bug in their code.
So true. It is terribly difficult to find time to read such things in the middle of the school day or school year. I know the "building the plane while flying it" has become a tiresome metaphor, so forgive me, but it is a little like asking teachers to read the insightful manuals while they're busy flying.
Yes! Lauren, this is exactly why I am so adamant about building resources through open source communities. (And I realize that probably no one reading this has ever participated in an open source community.)
Situation today: "Read my book on teaching Fluency." "Read my book on Cognitive Load theory". "Listen to my hour + 20 podcast with the author of a study on how teaching writing strategies offer a 0.7 standard deviation improvement in comprehension test scores." "Attend my 90 minute webinar on
Oral Language and Vocabulary Strategies to Develop Confident, Capable Learners on June 2 at 2 pm EST."
These things are all well and good on their own. I read these studies and listen to these podcasts. Yet they are not a solution for 3 million teachers. (Does the majority of teachers read more than one teaching book a year?)
Better solution: Extremely iterated and improved compilations of the best from all of those. That give teachers a well-vetted summary of the things they absolutely need most; in the most concise and explicit way; with further links to the evidence and deeper explanations behind them.
BTW, this is even more true for the trainers than for the 3 million teachers.
We tend to think that the average teacher trainer is like the ones in our feeds on X, on Substack, at researchEd. We're getting closer, but,...
Wow, you are so right-- since I came to Substack I have been blown away by all the great content here and have been writing my own stuff to contribute. It has led me to read some books (or at least buy/borrow them and start them) and listen to a bunch of podcasts (or at least cue them up with an intention to listen to them). I have a spreadsheet where I put links to articles that are mentioned that I will read "later." But who has the time? I'm curious about your solution--what it actually looks like? Because you're right, I have not participated in an open source community.
Lauren, yes, so much to learn!
Fortunately, individual teachers need much less than someone who is leading or training teachers. 😎
—
If you look at the https://sorquizzes.org/ you’ll see ~50 critical components of structured literacy.
The hope is to created special categories for, say, literacy block, or 2nd grade spelling & writing.
If you click the “Contribute to these quizzes” button, you’ll find a way to edit each item.
So, say you think a different video would explain working memory better. You’d add that, and ask the community to accept that change.
The community part is the secret sauce of open source.
In k12 training, everything is usually created & owned by 1-2 people.
In open source, a team (often 5-20 people) “owns” it; but usually anyone can submit improvements.
The culture is to treat those improvements with great care.
So, there’s no putting out a book or podcast, that you think is better than the last guy’s book, then moving on.
The culture is of maintaining one high quality resource, as a community.
Thanks for interacting on this!
So,… someone built the Facebook groups? And no one was there before that?
I was with Donna in the very early days, and helped her take it from something she was struggling to keep up with to at least a more manageable group with multiple moderators, rules, docs, etc.
It and the groups that followed were a disruptive innovation that really launched the SOR movement!
Yet we know that those groups, and the advice that hurried teachers get, have begotten a new set of problems.
You’ve seen Seidenberg and many others talk about it.
I refer to that as SoR’s source of truth problem.
That is, on top of all the gigabytes of 60 years of research, what are the current best practices in Structured Literacy?
What’s the trail of evidence to back each one?
For what aspects do we not really have a single ‘best practice’?
Those questions got a lot of attention last summer. Before everyone jumped to the new shiny AI topic.
Yet, I don’t think the challenge went away?
I have no idea how I made it through my first two years of teaching (delusion?) It does get easier...kind of.
Anyway, fantastic essay. I found you from the74 :)
Great read - for a profession so dependent on reflection, there is very little reflection at an industry level. I suppose it’s easier to dismiss and pigeonhole any concerns as being from people who “aren’t cut out for teaching anyway”, rather than listen and act.
Great post. I think the point about theoretical versus practical knowledge is critical - I always picture Roland "Prez" Pryzbylewski in the Wire walking into his classroom for the first time trying to get the students's attention and he was a former cop. Reality hits quickly when you have a room of teenagers and no plan. You need to learn to pivot quickly or you will not survive. But school culture is huge also. And it can change quickly. Compare our systems to the most successful - Finland, Japan - and you can see that it can be done.
This is an insightful post. I haven't read anything like this before. I will add one other point which I have read many times before, so it's not original: talk to the people who didn't decided not even to try such a low-paying, poorly respected profession in the first place. The people at the top of their college classes at the top universities who would only consider teaching if they got the prestigious "Teach for America" placement as a stepping stone to doing something else more prestigious and better paying. Teachers need to be paid more, but at the same time, the profession and the training needs to change. And that's too much to ask to happen all at once. #pipedream #butstillhopeful
Love this - our nonprofit is an education impact incubator that empowers educators to build dream programs with support of our 65+ partners! Would love to connect around this!!