Today’s Literacy Headlines

The picture of instruction that has emerged since the coronavirus forced students and teachers into remote learning is clear and troubling: There’s less of it, and the children with the greatest need are getting the least. These dynamics carry serious implications as schools plan to reopen in the fall. But even though the picture of diminished instruction is clear, it’s not simple. Pandemic learning is complex and contradictory. Some students are getting live video lessons for hours daily and staying in close contact with their teachers, while others get no real-time instruction and hear from their teachers perhaps once a week. Many teachers are pulling 12-hour days, while many others work less than they did a few months ago. Some parents push angrily for stronger academics during home-learning, while others demand relief, saying they can’t handle home-schooling along with their other obligations.

There is an inextricable, and yet largely untapped, link between information literacy and Social and Emotional Learning (SEL), defined as “process through which children and adults understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions” by the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL). We know that news is often designed to trigger an emotional response. And yet, teaching kids to recognize and manage those triggers isn’t always a component of news and information literacy protocols. While many schools are looking for ways to incorporate both news literacy and SEL right now, individually, we believe that the relationship between news and emotion creates an opportunity for them to be combined.

While teachers around the country are sending assignments in seconds with the click of a mouse, I rode the bus for 93 miles and six hours so my students at KIPP ENC in Halifax, North Carolina, could have instructional packets to continue their schoolwork. When I hear government officials talk about how successful remote learning is, I know they have never been to Halifax County. This COVID-19 is awful for our students, who do not have the same connectivity or resources that so many other children do. I know students at my school and in my community are struggling daily. Along the bus route, I would see students waiting in anticipation, waiting for us to come by. I wish I could say they were waiting only for our packets, but our delivery included food for their families, and that was the bigger draw.

Four out of 10 of the poorest U.S. students are accessing remote learning as little as once a week or less, according to a new survey from ParentsTogether, an advocacy group. By contrast, for families making more than $100,000 a year, 83% of kids are doing distance learning every day, with the majority engaged over two hours a day, the survey found. From the beginning, experts in distance learning warned that it can magnify inequities, with the most able and highly advantaged learners humming along while learners who need more support fall far behind.

The SLJ team is hard at work curating some of our top summer reading picks for a variety of age groups by type, genre, and subject area. Those lists will roll out starting after Memorial Day. In the meantime, here are some of our favorite lists from other organizations and libraries.

I’m a high school librarian with a background in teaching reading and English Language Arts, and I hope this ruling on behalf of Detroit Public Schools sets a strong precedent that every public school in America — in big cities such as Chicago, in poor rural communities and elsewhere — must have the resources to teach our children essential literacy skills. The ruling came to mind for me as I worked with my kindergarten-age son during this age of remote learning. He has been learning to read, and his suburban Chicago public school has the resources to do so. Every Chicago school child should get the same quality instruction and resources you’ll find at my kids’ suburban schools — veteran teachers and reading specialists, libraries and librarians.

For Tabatha Rosproy, the newly named Teacher of the Year, the importance of her work goes beyond her students’ achievements, even though those are impressive. Rosproy is a teacher at a preschool located within a seniors community in Winfield, Kansas; the impact of her and her 16 students can also be measured by the smiles and hugs delivered daily from a coterie of seniors. “It’s remarkable to spend time in her classroom,” said Randy Watson, the state commissioner of education. “You get to watch this intergenerational play between 4-year-olds and senior citizens that’s so beneficial to both. You pair that with a remarkable teacher, and you have magic.” Rosproy is the first preschool teacher to win the Council of Chief State School Officers’ top prize in its 68-year history. Winning this award will take Rosproy out of the classroom for a year, during which time she will promote the importance of preschool education and the value of teaching social-emotional skills to 4-year-olds.

All over the country, states, districts, and task forces of every sort are wrestling with the question of how to safely reopen schools. This scenario planning is daunting, as schools must navigate a minefield of health, safety, legal, and instructional issues, and do so blindfolded by our ever-changing yet imperfect understanding of the virus itself. The AEI “blueprint for back to school” does an excellent job spelling out the major considerations that leaders must take into account, but it stops short of providing specific advice. With the hope of moving the conversation forward a bit more, here’s my attempt to do that for elementary schools, informed by some of the country’s leading educators, lessons from “early re-openers” around the globe, and the newly released CDC guidance. I’ll consider how social distancing might look, how schedules might work, and other logistical questions currently keeping leaders up at night.

Former teachers are returning to education during the pandemic to help educate the 55.1 million public and private school students stuck at home. Motivated by a desire to contribute, former educators around the country are returning to the classroom, virtually. Many are volunteers who are eager to help bored kids and overwhelmed parents, while others are using teaching to pay the bills while their professional lives are uncertain.

In this episode of ExtraOrdinary Districts in Extraordinary Times, Threadgill, Assistant Superintendent of Academics Lakesha Brackins, and George Hall Elementary School Principal Melissa Mitchell, talk about the challenges of operating in the time of coronavirus — including what’s involved in holding in-person graduation ceremonies. Communicating with 54,000 students, their families, and 6,000 teachers and staff members was the biggest challenge, Threadgill says. To communicate clearly the district set up a website that provides information and textbooks and a hotline that provides technical assistance and homework help. Threadgill and Brackins are optimistic that the experience of closing school buildings will have the effect of bringing the district together and forcing improvement. “We completely transformed education in Mobile County,” says Brackins. “This is going to make our district better.”

As school closures were extended and more states announced the rest of the 2019–20 academic year would be conducted online, educators and literacy organizations started brainstorming the best ways to get books to kids for the spring and summer. The efforts have ranged in scope and helped kids in large and small districts across the country. The books—for students to keep at home and not have to return to a school or public library—are distributed to provide comfort, escape, a little normalcy, and hopefully lessen the exaggerated summer slide that is expected to hit after months of remote learning followed by summer break. Many book efforts around the country have been combined with food service programs, whether they are pickups at district locations or school buses that shuttle books with meals for closer-to-home deliveries.

Written English is a code in which letters and groups of letters are used to stand for sounds, and to be able to read, children must learn to break it—literally, to de-code it. Although skilled reading involves many factors, decoding ability is the foundation on which it rests; after all, it is impossible to pay attention to meaning unless ones knows what the words say! The following list is intended to indicate some key warnings signs that may indicate a decoding problem. It is not, however, intended to be used a source for any particular diagnosis. Keep in mind that children learn to read at varying rates, and that some difficulties early on are normal and by no means indicative of a serious problem. That said, if your child or a child you know displays many of these behaviors while reading, we urge you to seek out quality, phonics-based intervention. Reading problems that are relatively straightforward to correct when a child is in elementary school can seriously hinder them from fulfilling their academic potential later on. The longer they remain unaddressed, the more challenging they become to remedy.

Cognitive scientists know a lot more than they did 25 years ago about the brain and how humans learn. And yet, a lot of the new research isn’t making its way into classrooms. There are a lot of reasons for that, according to the panelists, including teacher education programs that haven’t kept up with the research, intransigent institutions that are difficult to change, and human nature. Eric Kalenze, an English language arts teacher and curriculum leader at FIT Academy Charter School in Apple Valley, Minnesota, is also the U.S. ambassador for researchED, an international grassroots organization trying to bridge the divide between effective teaching research and the classroom, spoke about cognitive science and its implications for classroom instruction during a recent Education Writers Association seminar on adolescent learning and well-being.

Today, there are many publishers and imprints that seek to spotlight and promote diverse, inclusive stories and work by creators of color, but 30 years ago, that was not the case. Noting that lack of multicultural voices in children’s literature, Thomas Low and Phillip Lee launched Lee & Low Books in 1991. This week, Low died of cancer, but he leaves behind a legacy of booklists, careers launched, and a publishing house to continue the mission. “He was proud each and every season we released a new list of books,” his son Jason Low, publisher and co-owner of Lee & Low, wrote in an email. “We have heard from librarians who have recommended our titles; educators who use our books in their classrooms; authors and illustrators who have published with us; and agents who have brought manuscripts to Lee & Low for years. The common theme people tell us is that the work that we do is important, that diversity matters, and that even though they are sad to hear of Tom’s passing, they are glad that his legacy will live on through us.”

Kenneth S. Goodman, whose influential theories of reading dominated the teaching of reading in grade school classrooms in the 1980s and early 1990s, died in his Tucson, Ariz., home March 12. He was 92. Whole language instruction emphasized that students learn to read through immersion in books and eschewed traditional systematic teaching of phonics and spelling. During its heyday, it dominated U.S. teacher-preparation programs and curriculum guidelines alike. Goodman was not, as is often asserted, wholly dismissive of phonics. He believed readers did use knowledge of sound-letter systems when reading, but relied on them less as they grew more efficient. But he insisted that phonics should be taught only incidentally. The successive 50 years of literacy research following on the heels of Goodman’s early work, based on experimental studies and cognitive science research, has concluded that, contrary to Goodman’s ideas, skilled readers rely more heavily on knowledge of letter-sound correspondences than context clues when learning new words. For many students, that body of work notes, the alphabetic code must be explicitly taught, not incidentally discovered. Some of the ideas that Goodman fought passionately for are now broad staples of ELA classrooms, including the importance of children’s literature, immersing new readers in books, and creating print-rich environments for students. And the last few years of policy has resuscitated the importance of comprehension—not merely word identification—as a goal of reading programs, particularly in relationship to the background knowledge students need to understand what they read. Goodman’s insistence that writing is a powerful complement to reading rich texts lives on in both the Common Core State Standards, and is a key notion in the current interest in improving elementary and middle-school curricula programs.

In elementary schools, children got 30 minutes of remote instruction in English and math each day. Teachers were supposed to incorporate language skills into that work, but students missed out on 55 minutes of daily English language development they received before the virus struck. The rapid shift to remote learning forced by the COVID-19 crisis has left the nation’s roughly 5 million English language learners in a precarious position. Many have seen their language instruction shrink as districts balance competing priorities and struggle to connect with students attending school from their living rooms. Schools and districts have largely had to figure out how to meet the needs of English learners on their own.

Whether it’s ed tech boosters or teachers union leaders — surprise! — everyone’s take seems to line up with their priors from before the novel coronavirus struck, even as the situation seems to call for radical pragmatism. The districts and charter school networks that are responding the best seem to have just one thing in common — a can-do spirit. Working with stakeholders in different parts of the country has made me certain only about the uncertainty. The impact in a few months or a few years still seems to hinge on collective action and policymakers’ decisions. But there will be an impact. Here are 10 questions I’m watching.

One unexpected silver lining of the shutdown has been an improved learning experience for certain students, including some who struggle to pay attention in class and even some high-achieving self-starters. Enough students are benefiting from this crash course in remote learning that parents and educators are wondering if, when buildings reopen, there are aspects that can be continued for these students, as well as lessons that can apply to everyone else. For some, the avoidance of distractions like disruptive classmates, or simply not being in a room filled with other children, has been a boon. Others have taken advantage of the ability, when offered by their teachers, to work at their own pace and take breaks when they want.

School closures can be challenging for children with special needs, particularly those who rely on a team of teachers and therapists to access their education and who can’t replicate those services at home. While the initial weeks of the shutdowns caused tears and frustration for many students and their families, they’ve also brought unexpected joys and triumphs as parents learn how resilient and capable their children can be. Denise Stile Marshall, CEO of The Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, Inc., a national organization dedicated to protecting and enforcing the legal and civil rights of students with disabilities, was surprised by the number of parents in her network who reported positive developments with their children during the closures.

o your normal, too-short summer vacation has suddenly become a hyper-extended, undifferentiated snake-dragon thing. You have a lot of time to read. (And play Minecraft yes, but also to read.) Closed stores are no excuse, either! Apps like Libby and Overdrive let you borrow almost anything, including some of the newest books and audiobooks, and have them sent straight to your e-reader or cell phone. Barnes and Noble is offering curbside pickup for online orders, and some independent bookstores are making deliveries to your doorstep. You can get a Kindle. If you don’t have a lot of books on hand, or easy access to devices, San Francisco children’s librarian Elizabeth Perez recommends making use of Little Free Libraries, small collections of free books at more than 100,000 locations worldwide (you can sanitize the cover if you’re worried about germs), or rereading older books with an eye toward creativity, changing parts of the story and telling your own version. Or set up a safety-conscious series of swaps with your friends.

Speech-recognition systems date back to the 1950s. Yet the recent emergence of “smart” assistant devices in homes—powered by the likes of Alexa and Siri—has sparked renewed interest in their application as educational tools in the classroom. However, do not conflate speech technology with smart speakers and other devices, says Satya Nitta, the former head of IBM’s research team on artificial intelligence for learning. “What Alexa and Siri are are basically consumer assistants built for a specific purpose, which is to bring you news, entertainment, things like that. But the underlying technology can be used for much more specific use cases, especially for learning,” he says. In education, speech-recognition technology addresses questions that are fundamentally different from those posed by general consumers, says Nitta. Instead of responding to queries about what the weather is like, or how to cook a certain dish, these tools can be tailored to support language learning, for use cases ranging from pronunciation and oral fluency. They can also help diagnose dyslexia and speech impairments.

Across the United States, volunteers are reporting a jump in little free libraries as readers look to pass the time. Made of wood or brick, and placed in front of parks or in the trunk of a car, the libraries have seen their small spaces overwhelmed with books. Whether it’s “Love in the Time of Cholera” by Gabriel García Márquez or children’s books or Macbeth, the libraries provide some their only interaction of the day outside of the home. Since 2009, tens of thousands of little free libraries have sprung up in the U.S. and more than 100 countries. The small spaces operate by donations and through volunteers. In rural areas, where broadband internet is sparse, the little free libraries may be only place to find a Toni Morrison novel.

When schools in Owsley County, Ky., closed in early March, James Barrett hopped on his bus each morning to deliver meals to hundreds of students. Then the special education teacher, who is also a bus driver for the rural district, would head home and log in for Zoom meetings with his high school special education students—some of whom have 3rd- and 4th-grade level skills in reading, writing, and math. Across the country, widespread school closures have upended special education, which is administered through carefully constructed plans called Individualized Education Programs and require extensive services that are not easily transferred to the internet, even for families who have access. And, while each student in Owsley County has access to high-speed internet, that does not mean they have it at home. In this rural community where the median household income is $15,805, the third lowest in the nation, not everyone can afford the $50 per month fees.

How has the COVID-19 crisis impacted summer reading? Summer reading programs are among the most popular events run by public libraries. There are reading logs, prizes, performances, and regular visits by excited young patrons and families. It takes months to plan, a process that typically starts long before the school year ends. This year, of course, nothing is typical, and very little will run as planned. Less than two percent of libraries are preparing for an in-person program, while more than 64 percent has shifted to online only summer reading. Many mentioned plans to use Beanstack, a reading challenge software program and app. Scheduled performances or programs by outside people or organizations have been canceled or are going virtual. For some, the crisis has created new and previously unconsidered partnerships.

This will all end. State lawmakers will lift stay-at-home orders, office dwellers will return to their cubicles, and — critical for America’s stressed-out parents — children will go back to their classrooms. For most schools, however, getting there will be easier said than done. Despite widespread uncertainty and the unique demands of online classes, a growing chorus of education leaders say school officials must act now to prepare for a future return to school. New blueprints from education groups, think tanks and government agencies offer school leaders a daunting checklist of measures to consider. From staggered start times to in-class lunches and relaxed graduation requirements, students should brace for a return to class that is anything but education as usual.

Education pundits are predicting wider gaps between groups of students as a result of Covid-related school closures, citing evidence of how much learning is lost over the summer. But hold on: the studies showing that income-based gaps grow over the summer were done decades ago. The Baltimore one began with kindergartners in 1982. A review of research that reached a similar conclusion came out in 1996. More recent research indicates that while most students lose some ground during the summer, especially in math, the gap between rich and poor doesn’t grow more then. It grows at pretty much the same rate as during the school year. To address the inequities resulting from the pandemic, many are now urging that schools expand the number of hours they’re in session, perhaps eliminating summer vacation. But research shows that such initiatives have had little or no effect. Extending the school year would only make sense if we also improved the curriculum so that it focused on building students’ knowledge, beginning in kindergarten.

Jason Reynolds isn’t a parent or teacher, but he does know how to spark the creativity of young people. The New York Times bestselling author of young adult fiction wants to make sure kids continue to imagine and grow while they’re at home participating in distance learning. “I don’t want their imaginations to atrophy,” Reynolds says. Earlier this year, the D.C.-area native was appointed by the Library of Congress as the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. While Reynolds’ nationwide tour as the literary ambassador doesn’t start until the fall, he’s already had to change the way he engages with young people amid the coronavirus pandemic. Reynolds has released a video series titled, “Write. Right. Rite.” Reynolds says he picked the title because he wants young people to fall into the habit of expressing themselves or writing every day. The series airs twice a week on the Library of Congress’s and Reynolds’s social media pages. It’s a way for him to reach out to his young adult audience and ask them to imagine and write.

With schools looking at long-term closures because of coronavirus (COVID-19), ensuring that students can make the most of their studies at home is more important than ever. The literacy and learning communities are well-equipped to help make online learning easier. In addition to ILA’s resources (including our tips for connecting with readers online and using web tools to communicate), an outpouring of support across industries has resulted in free assets educators and families and caregivers can use to engage their readers remotely. Here, you’ll find a handful of the many offerings at your disposal during this uncertain time.

A historic settlement reached between the state and Detroit students calls for $94.5 million in future literacy funding, a $280,000 payout among seven plaintiffs and the creation of two Detroit task forces to help ensure a quality education for students. News of the agreement came after the Detroit students were locked in a nearly four-year legal battle with the state for better school and learning conditions. The lawsuit was brought by seven students who argued they were deprived access to literacy because of a lack of books, teachers and poor building conditions. Despite the state’s position to defend itself against the students’ accusations of inequality over literacy access, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said Thursday she has maintained that every student, no matter where they come from, has a birthright to a quality public education. The proposal faces an uncertain road in the Republican-controlled Legislature, which has fought with the Democratic governor over budget priorities including education spending.

For parents of children with special needs, who often carry an extra heavy load managing academics in the best of times, the burden while on home quarantine is magnified. Many educational services — such as a full-day program for a child with severe autism — are simply impossible to implement effectively online, and not all parents have time to monitor educational interventions. And the reality is that most parents are neither teachers nor therapists. Stay strong in planning for your family’s well-being, but don’t create more stress in your home by taking on more than is realistic. Parents may fear that with schools closed, their children’s progress will stall or reverse. But as always with children, long-term growth relies on a well-monitored three- or five-year plan, not every week or month along the way. Schools will open again at some point, and appropriate services will resume and methodically address whatever ground has been lost.

On May 14, Chiefs for Change (a bi-partisan membership organization of sitting and aspiring state education commissioners and school district superintendents) and Johns Hopkins University released “The Return: How Should Education Leaders Prepare for Reentry and Beyond?” The authors recommend all plans begin with two key goals: ensuring physical spaces embody public health guidelines to keep students and educators safe and prevent further outbreaks; and instilling enough confidence in educators and families so that they will return to face to face classrooms. In order to reorganize teaching and learning so that it addresses the effects of current school closures and can withstand potential regional closures in the fall, “The Return” proposes four categories school communities should address in their scenario planning.

As parents juggle uncertainty in the coming months, there are small yet important things they can do to send their children back to school in the fall with a sense of confidence. Reading prowess may end up being the biggest measure of success. At The Literacy Lab, we work with 6,000 struggling readers every day, helping them achieve big literacy gains via just 20 minutes per day. Evidence-based practice from our work at The Literacy Lab shows that small things, when done purposefully and repeatedly, can make a big difference — even from home. Parents have tools to support their children’s learning and help them to stay on track.

If your kid already has a tablet glued to their hands, why not take the opportunity to make it educational? These 16 free online reading courses are perfect to help your child excel when it comes to phonetic awareness and reading comprehension. Plus, they’re fun, and if they happen to develop a passion for reading along the way, they’ll be set up for a lifetime of success.

Teachers have pivoted from their previous routine, away from much of their lessons, without a roadmap, and are plotting out how to teach students from a distance. For early elementary teachers, perhaps no subject is as critical as reading, the basis of their students’ future academic, and broader, success. Reading proficiently by the end of third grade is linked to high school graduation and eventual job earnings. But the disruption of closing campuses and unexpectedly shifting to home learning almost certainly will hurt reading progress. Timothy Shanahan, a professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Illinois Chicago, said there is little research on what an upheaval of this magnitude could do to learning, but that research about the loss of skills during summer break shows that students from under-resourced backgrounds or struggling with trauma suffer more severe losses.

There have been multiple pits of quicksand on our remote-learning journey, logistically and emotionally. So many parents are burnt out from trying to educate their children at home, and while there are calls to give up on distance learning all together, I’m not ready to quit just yet. So I asked a teacher, a learning specialist and a head of school how parents can keep going when every minute feels like an eternity.

A team of education leaders, charged with recommending improvements to reading instruction in classrooms across North Carolina, is refining its final proposals. The State Board of Education’s literacy task force has taken on big questions in recent months: How can reading instruction improve? How can teachers be better prepared in college? How can current teachers learn more effective strategies? The task force is thinking of ways to support and improve the work of the thousands of elementary school teachers who are instructing students to read across the state. The group’s draft recommendations include funding for professional development for elementary teachers, administrators, and instructional coaches that is based on current scientific research on reading instruction.

In these painful, disruptive times, many families are turning to the soothing repetition of jigsaw puzzles to bond and to calm the nerves. Puzzle sales worldwide, including in the U.S., have exploded. Major manufacturer Ravensburger, for instance, reported a 370 percent increase year over year in the past few weeks. Beyond their pandemic-driven popularity — and fortunately for parents with young children — the toy can provide a range of educational benefits. There is evidence that early puzzle play can build spatial thinking, says professor in the University of Chicago’s psychology department Susan Levine — meaning the ability to recognize, understand and manipulate the position of objects and how they relate to each other. “And math and science skills are bolstered by strong spatial thinking.”

When schools reopen in the fall, they will look very different than the schools children left in the spring. There will likely be masks, temperature checks and extra space between desks. Nearly 1 out of 5 teachers may not be able to return to school buildings. And looming over schools will be the potential for additional closures forcing students back to remote learning. The new Blueprint for Back to School lays out the issues leaders need to address in these next four months. It is a product reflecting the thinking of 21 former state education chiefs, federal policymakers (spanning the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations), district superintendents and charter school leaders. Because of the unique challenge of this moment, it is imperative that planning start now.

For both teachers and students alike, paying attention might be especially challenging during the coronavirus crisis, and especially so for students who struggle to focus in school. Nearly 4 of 5 teachers think their students’ ability to focus has gotten worse with school-related tasks during the shutdown, according to an April EdWeek Research Center survey. Executive functioning is roughly defined as a cluster of skills required to sit still, concentrate, and be able to go from one activity to the next. Experts said the risk of concentration problems is exacerbated for students and adults by a variety of factors related to the COVID-19 crisis, including stress over health problems and unemployment and long hours of video game playing. Experts agreed that teachers and parents both have a role to play in changing the environmental factors that interfere with children’s executive functioning. Stephanie Carlson, a developmental psychologist and Professor at the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota, recommends establishing predictable routines before working on executive function or academic skills.

When school and public libraries closed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many children and teens lost access to books. With few books at home, some students don’t have adequate reading material to support their school assignments or their independent reading. As we work to increase students’ access through school and library initiatives to loan books, we must increase how many books young people own at home. By far the most common system among the librarians and teachers I talked with incorporates book exchanges with the school lunches offered to high-need families. When caregivers come to school for meal pickups, they can also take home books. Some school librarians encourage students to reserve library books through the school library website and pick them up during designated exchange times at school. Several community groups have set up free book baskets outside their schools or local laundromats. Coordinating with local independent bookstores and community organizations, some school districts have set up accounts for families to order a few books for their children and receive them by mail. Communicating with students and families via email or phone, many educators are driving around school neighborhoods, picking up and delivering books to their students through no-contact book exchanges. In communities with Little Free Libraries, educators and families report increased use.

ROGER SUTTON: So here we are: two longtime reviewers remembering books that broke the rules, whether aesthetically, politically, in terms of subject matter, or anything else. BETSY HEARNE: The first thing that occurred to me is that no book is an island. Books evolve in kind of a conversation with one another over decades. Let’s talk about the six decades between 1960 and 2020, because that was the period when children’s book publishing exploded. It had been expanding, but it really blew the roof off then. Certainly, 1963 was a watershed. RS: Was that when Where the Wild Things Are came out? BH: 1963, Where the Wild Things Are. 1964, Harriet the Spy. 1965, Jazz Country. All controversial rule breakers, but regarded so differently. Where the Wild Things Are was reviewed and given awards. Harriet the Spy was roundly rejected by libraries and ALA recommendations, but survived. Nat Hentoff’s Jazz Country did not survive; it’s long out of print. One of the characters is an African American jazz musician who gets attacked by the police and injured. It was really startling at the time to see police depicted as racist bad guys.

When the coronavirus emerged in the U.S., people who share books on a small-scale, the stewards of little free libraries, saw a new need. Adding food and other supplies suddenly transformed many of their tiny library boxes into pantries. Now anyone who has a “sharing box” can add their location to an interactive map to connect those in need with those who want to give.

A close look at two very different first-grade classes in two of America’s largest cities shows how the coronavirus pandemic has done nothing to level the playing field of American education, and instead has widened the gaps that have always existed. Chicago Jewish Day School — a private school determined to make remote education during the coronavirus as similar as possible to what it looked like before the pandemic — provides four hours and 15 minutes of daily live instruction, including yoga, art and music. Students even do messy baking projects over Zoom, with parents as sous chefs. It bears little resemblance to the more typical experience that Jacob Rios is having in Philadelphia, where he attends first grade at a public school, Spruance Elementary. Jacob did not see his teacher via video screen until late April; the district spent the first several weeks of the shutdown focused on training staff members to use remote teaching tools, distributing laptops to students and getting meals to low-income families, which make up a majority of the district’s population.

Many states are leaving decisions about how to continue instruction during school closures up to districts. Digital Promise and The Education Trust partnered to compile the following questions to guide equity advocates and district leaders as they engage in conversations about ensuring that our most vulnerable students have equitable access to distance learning, both now and for however long school buildings are shuttered. Depending on public health guidance, distance learning may be needed for the summer and parts of the next school year. In this guide, we share ideas that advocates and district leaders can consider when planning for how to continue teaching and supporting students, based on what other states and districts have begun to do. Still, even under the best circumstances, distance learning is not a substitute for in-school education. The learning loss created by the COVID-19 crisis is going to be massive. Districts should be planning now for how to make up this lost learning time, which particularly affects our most vulnerable students, by implementing summer programs, extending the school year, and extending or restructuring school days for summer 2020, the 2020-21 school year, and summer 2021.

The real Fred Rogers had a lifelong dedication to and respect for children. He was passionate about music and the arts. He was whimsical and had a terrific sense of humor. The real Fred Rogers promoted kindness, tolerance, and love for others. Fred Rogers was a person I had never encountered before. He was a rebel. An unexpected rebel. He was a male role model we had never seen before. It became clear to me that I needed to tell Fred’s story. I needed to use my voice as an author and an illustrator to make a book that would share all of this with today’s children and families. “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping. If you look for the helpers, you’ll know that there’s hope.’”

Obviously, due to the recent COVID-19 outbreak, summer plans are on hold until further notice. And for families who rely on camp during the warmer months, this can be problematic. Although traditional summer camps might be out of the question this year, there are plenty of virtual options that will keep kids of all ages entertained. Whether they’re looking to keep their academics sharp (hey, no one likes that pesky summer slide, right?) or just want some good, old-fashioned fun, these online summer camps will deliver.

Over 90 percent of Head Start programs have temporarily closed since the COVID-19 outbreak began. These closures include nearly all Migrant and Seasonal Head Start programs, which provide early education, nutrition, and health services to agricultural workers and their families. Agricultural workers, who are particularly vulnerable to the virus and many of whom were excluded from stimulus relief, now have the added strain of finding child care, while Migrant and Seasonal Head Start programs do their best to support families from afar. Migrant and Seasonal Head Start (MSHS) programs, first established in 1969, provide high-quality early learning experiences for children from birth through age five. To be eligible for MSHS enrollment, families must earn the majority of their income from agricultural labor and meet Head Start qualifications, including income below the federal poverty guidelines. As of 2017, 62 MSHS programs received federal funding to serve 28,591 children in 38 states.

Laura Cooper begins class at eight o’clock each morning in her basement, behind her foosball table. She records videos of herself that go out to her kindergarten students in Washington state. They’ve been learning how to read from home since the Covid-19 pandemic closed their schools. So much has changed for teachers, students and parents in the last few months, and we asked you to send in stories about how you’ve been adapting. On this episode of the Educate podcast, we hear from Cooper and listeners like you.

The winners of this year’s Hans Christian Andersen Awards—considered the Nobel Prize for children’s literature—were announced by the International Board on Books for Young People as part of the virtual edition of the Bologna Children’s Book Fair. U.S. author Jacqueline Woodson received the prize for writing, and Swiss artist Albertine was awarded the honor for illustration. Woodson made her debut in 1990 with Last Summer with Maizon, the first in a trilogy exploring the friendship between two girls. Her work now totals 33 books and 13 short stories, spanning issues such as foster care, interracial relationships, drug abuse, and more. In its citation, the jury said that Woodson’s books “feature lyrical language, powerful characters, and an abiding sense of hope.” Her autobiographical novel in verse Brown Girl Dreaming was the winner of the 2014 National Book Award and Coretta Scott King Award and is a Newbery Honor book.After serving as Young People’s Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017 she was named National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature for 2018 to 2019.

Public schools play a range of roles in society beyond education. As childcare for millions of working parents, they are a cornerstone of any attempt to reopen the economy. They are hubs for community relationships, and distribution points for essential social services. But, before any of that, they must be safe places for children. With those various functions in mind, education leaders are putting out plans that forecast some very big changes to what public school might look like in the coming months and even years. The complications are leading to a patchwork effect and a disconnect between levels of government in many places. In the past few days, the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second-largest teachers union, put out a detailed blueprint for reopening. And so did the American Enterprise Institute, the conservative thinktank, which asked retired state superintendents, city chancellors and other school leaders to weigh in. These two plans have a lot in common as far as basic medical recommendations: the need for rapid and repeated coronavirus testing of students and staff, contact tracing, stepped-up hygiene and cleaning and reducing class sizes to allow for social distancing.

The extended school closures caused by the coronavirus crisis have upended the nation’s after-school programs, leaving most with no children to serve and no schools to operate out of. Most organizations have shut their doors. But some, like ourBRIDGE for Kids—a Charlotte, N.C.-based after-school program for English-learner and refugee children—have pivoted to offer new services and extend their hours, doing what they can to help families struggling with food insecurity, lost jobs, and cooped-up children. Using a combination of grant funds and partnerships with foundations and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools, ourBRIDGE helps distribute about 1,000 meals per day to families, hosts virtual check-ins for students, delivers personalized activity boxes of art and STEM supplies to homes, and conducts U.S. Census outreach efforts in the heavily immigrant neighborhoods it serves in east Charlotte.

The transition to distance learning has caused unprecedented disruption to our education system. Many low-income students do not have internet access necessary for taking classes online. While some districts and charter schools are distributing devices and hotspots, in others, students are making do with paper packets. So let’s think creatively about what we can do to help. One constant resource for kids of all ages is the local library. Why not begin by opening libraries and using them as one way to bridge the gap? It could soon be possible to partially staff libraries with employees who have recovered from the coronavirus, who are therefore more likely to be immune, and who volunteer to return to work. After libraries are deep cleaned, librarians could curate recommended reading lists and encourage children to check out books from them. Teachers could also develop reading lists and periodically ask their students for book reports, to demonstrate that they’re participating.

Pets are important companions to adults and children who are home during the pandemic: A look at the myriad shared photos on social media and Wired’s recent article “Thanks to Sheltering in Place, Animal Shelters are Empty” makes that abundantly clear. It’s a good time to tune into pet-focused podcasts for some extra comfort and some fun, too. Are you interested in dog shows? In a Storynory episode on the topic, a prize-winning owner breaks down the behind-the-scenes of big competitions. “Eat Your Spanish,” dedicated to helping kids learn the language, offers an animal-themed episode. Stories about a humorous dog-cat rivalry, a pet contest, and interviews with an aquarium veterinarian and a military detection dog manager round out the list.

As social distancing measures continue, libraries anticipate big changes to summer reading. With chances for face-to-face contact limited or absent, many seek alternative strategies for hosting events and recording reading goals. The answer for most: online programming, such as virtual storytimes, science experiments, and small-scale cooking demonstrations. “Our plan is to do a pretty strong and regular slate of virtual programming put out on Facebook,” says Luke Bentley, assistant director at Guernsey County (Ohio) Public Library. “When it comes to doing storytimes over the summer, they’ll be live broadcasts, probably at the same time every day,” he says. “But if Mom works until 6, she can scroll back through the library’s Facebook page, find that storytime happened at 11, and enjoy it just as if she were there.” In addition to adding online programming, libraries are finding digital solutions to track summer reading progress. BPL, for example, will use an app called Beanstack to allow both participants and administrators to track goals online. Patrons without internet access can call a librarian, who will record their reading progress in Beanstack for them.

What do librarians hope kids will read while they’re at home during the pandemic? The PBS NewsHour asked for recommendations, and their answers often contain lessons for navigating this crisis. Jennifer Thornton, director at Carroll County Library in Huntingdon, Tennessee said, “I highly suggest families read the classics together, aloud if possible. Classics hang around for many reasons, not the least of which is that they are relatable, emotive, linguistically diverse, and deal with morality in a multifaceted manner. Everything from a treasury of Mother Goose nursery rhymes and Winnie the Pooh (A.A. Milne original) for youngsters, to J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy or C. S. Lewis’ “The Chronicles of Narnia” book series for older readers, opens the floor for thematic group discussions and imaginative expansion.”

Each school day, Christy Caez’s son, who has ADHD and dyslexia, sits down with his district-provided Google Chromebook to do his classwork. The Lake Nokomis Community School second-grader does his best to complete assignments, but he’s not yet able to read. That means Caez, a stay-at-home mother of two who lives in the Bryant neighborhood, has to guide him through his assignments, reading instructions and typing up his work. “If I didn’t sit down with him, he wouldn’t get anything done,” Caez said. Many Minneapolis students with disabilities have, like Caez’s son, faced a steep learning curve in the transition to remote education. While some may be more engaged, there have been challenges both to ensure the students understand the technology and keep them motivated.

In the debate about nature versus nurture for developing reading skills, cognitive neuroscientists have a clear message: both matter. From infancy, children have a neural scaffolding in place upon which environmental factors refine and build reading skills. In new work being presented today at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society virtual meeting, scientists are reporting on these biological and environmental factors – including early screen time – as they uncover biomarkers that can identify children at risk for dyslexia and other reading acquisition disorders. he research being presented by Tzipi Horowitz-Kraus of The Technion in Israel and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and others suggests a variety of biological precursors are present in children prior to school age across languages, and several environmental factors can help or hinder reading acquisition. The goal is to identify children at risk early, to provide the best possible interventions that will improve literacy.

When my daughter was younger and we drove to school together, we listened to audiobooks. Tucked into my special memories is when Tink looked contemptuously at Peter Pan and my kindergartner asked me what “contemptuous” meant. Read-alouds and audiobooks are great for learning new words and phrases. Children hear the words pronounced correctly, hear the context around the word, and are free to try it out right away and learn even more. You know your readers really well with a good idea of what parts of the book they might not understand. Read-alouds allow adults to help their children learn to question what they don’t understand - the concrete and the philosophical. Younger children will need support more for actual word meanings and phrases - particularly words with multiple meanings. Older children may have questions about historical periods, time shifts, and character actions. Deep learning lies down both those paths. During our nine years of car commuting together, my daughter and I covered a lot of literary devices, historical events and friendship drama.

The International Literacy Association (ILA) released today its Choices reading lists, composed of titles selected by students and educators across the United States as the most outstanding books published in 2019. The release coincides with Children’s Book Week, a yearly celebration that encourages children to embrace the power of reading for pleasure. In response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s program has been reimagined to ensure the celebrations continue at home and online.

A federal appellate court last week in a historic ruling determined that the students’ constitutional rights were violated by that level of deprivation. In a 2-1 decision last week, judges from the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that students have a right to “a basic minimum education,” which the court defined as giving students the opportunity to learn to read. The ruling doesn’t address the vast inequities between rich schools and poor schools, but it does set a minimum standard that states must meet in public education: providing kids with “a chance at foundational literacy.” It’s the first time that a federal court has asserted that right. Advocates say the ruling could match Brown v. Board of Education in importance and hope it triggers a broader crusade against unequal education. The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected the idea that there is a general right to an education. But it has left open the possibility that students have the right to an education that is at least minimally adequate.