Things I Wish My Daughter’s Teacher Knew - Part 4

As I watch the last few days of 2022 go by, I’m reflecting on what I would most want my daughter’s current and future teachers to know. 

I finished listening to Sold a Story earlier this month. From my perspective as a literacy specialist, an educational advocate, and a parent to a child with dyslexia, I sure wish my daughter’s teachers, and all teachers for that matter had access to the information shared in this series.

It’s not like this series is perfect. There are always two sides to a story and always room to learn from well-done responses to well-done critiques. We have to be careful when we challenge one idea that we don’t push another too-simplistic perspective in the meantime, even if unintentionally.

The point of my daughter’s teachers listening to Emily Hanford’s reporting is not just to throw Lucy Calkins under the bus. From everything I can tell, Lucy Calkins really wanted to help kids become stronger readers throughout her career. That’s probably always been a huge motivator for her and her organization, among other things, since there are always multiple motivations embedded in our efforts. We have to be careful of demonizing someone and their work just because it turns out that they were wrong about a lot of it. As Adam Grant so beautifully describes in his book Think Again, learning how to admit when you are wrong, own it, and do your best to make it right, is really the best any of us can do as we navigate our own work in the world. 

Sold a Story pokes holes in an educational ideology and movement that has dominated way too much of the space, even when it was very clear that so many parts of it were not helping kids become good readers. In fact, the data has shown for a while that many of the “best practices” that are mainstream actually impede our kids from learning how to read and write well. This is something we simply cannot afford to do, especially for kids who will already struggle because of a learning disability, exposure to trauma, or lack of access to a consistent education.

I hope my daughter’s teachers can listen to this podcast series and feel empowered to challenge the status quo at their own school. I hope they will ask the hard questions even when it’s uncomfortable. I hope that they will advocate for access to curriculums that prioritize being aligned with and adjusting to the latest research, as many times as their career calls for. And I hope that they will speak their truth when the data shows that what they are doing isn’t working. I hope my daughter’s teachers are working in an environment that celebrates that growth mindset in them and supports them in the process. And if they don’t, I hope they can find the people who will support them in acting as radical agents of change in their school environments. 

May your last few days of 2022 be soft. I don’t know about you, but in our family, we aren’t going to worry about percentiles and academic gaps for the next several weeks. It’ll all still be there in 2023. We’ll keep going. But for now, we are going to focus on enjoying each other, taking it easy, and laughing as frequently as possible. Happy new year, friends. Thanks for being here.