Today’s Literacy Headlines

The glaring racial disconnect in our nation’s K-12 schools can no longer be ignored as the larger reckoning over systemic racism in policing, health, and education continues to play out. While the majority of K-12 teachers are white, they preside over classrooms that contain an increasing number of students of color and, simultaneously, a declining number of white students, research shows. This racial divide is harmful on several fronts. There are several ways to grow a diverse and equitable teaching workforce, say education experts. Here are some actionable steps.

Harsh discipline like corporal punishment, separating preschoolers with disabilities from their peers, and too few high-quality programs for English and dual language learners are among the “structural inequities” holding back young children of color from a successful start in school, according to a new report. And those disadvantages have only intensified as a result of the pandemic and the national protests over police violence, wrote the 15 contributors from 11 universities and organizations who authored the study. “Our systems have created barriers that stack the deck against many children — and they have to climb over those barriers before they are out of diapers,” the report said, calling on national, state and local leaders to “seize this moment as an opportunity for positive change.”

All Classroom Q&A posts on Teaching English-Language Learners (from the past nine years!) are described and linked to in this compilation post.

Joanna Cole, who teamed with the illustrator Bruce Degen to create one of the most popular and enduring children’s book series of recent decades, the bizarre but educational adventures chronicled under the rubric “The Magic School Bus,” died on Sunday in Sioux City, Iowa. Dick Robinson, Scholastic’s chairman, president and chief executive, said that Ms. Cole’s “Magic School Bus” books and the spinoff television series “made science both easy to understand and fun” for millions of children around the world. “The Magic School Bus” was only one of Ms. Cole’s literary creations — the Scholastic announcement said she wrote more than 250 books for children — but it was certainly the best known.

Joanna Cole, whose Magic School Bus series made science both dazzling and goofily fun for generations of children, died on July 12 at age 75. She originally created The Magic School Bus in 1986 with illustrator Bruce Degen. The core idea of a sweet and nerdy crew of schoolchildren taking field trips into scientific concepts, bodily parts, into space and back to the age of dinosaurs — and always led by their teacher, the intrepid Ms. Frizzle — eventually spun out into dozens of tie-ins and more than 93 million copies in print, plus a beloved television show that aired for 18 years in more than 100 countries.

There are no child prodigies in writing. No classic novels composed by a six year old. No world-altering essays written by some young person in second grade. That means that every writer starts out at the same level of skill and quality—somewhere between very low and none. The implications for teachers of writing are important. Teachers are going to meet students who are somewhere on this journey, and teachers should not mistake the students’ location on the path for their ability to make the journey. The fact that the student has not progressed very far yet does not mean she can never travel far down the path. So the teacher has to meet the students where they are and provide what they need to continue their journey. It may be support. It may be a critical eye. It may be additions to the students’ background of knowledge; it’s almost impossible to write well about things you know nothing about.

A growing number of school districts across the country have recently announced plans to return to full-time remote learning when the 2020-21 school year starts, defying nationwide pressure from federal leaders and some parents to at least partially reopen school buildings. It is an excruciating decision for school district leaders to make because of strong feelings on both sides of the reopening debate. And they are struggling to make those decisions with often conflicting messages from state and federal leaders. Some districts—including those in Milwaukee, Austin, Texas., and Nashville, Tenn.—have committed to full-time remote learning only for the first few weeks of the school year, leaving room to reopen in September. But the Los Angeles and San Diego Unified school districts in California, DeKalb schools in Georgia, and the Washington Township district in Indiana are proceeding with full-time remote learning plans that could extend well into the school year. In Prince George’s County, Md., students will be learning online at least through the rest of 2020.

This fall, public school districts should prioritize full-time, in-person classes for grades K-5 and for students with special needs. That’s the top-line recommendation of a new report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. The report includes an updated review of the evidence from around the world and a set of recommendations on mitigation strategies for the coronavirus in school settings. It adds to a hefty reading list of back-to-school guidance that now includes comprehensive recommendations from the CDC, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Federation of Teachers and every U.S. state except Kansas. There’s a growing consensus on a few best practices across most of these reports, such as the importance of masking and social distancing. What stands out from this particular report is its emphasis on collaboration with public health authorities and focus on not just recommendations for action now, but decision-making strategies for schools under conditions that will continue to change.

Schools are trying to plan for the upcoming academic year during a pandemic, economic recession, and national protests over police killings of Black Americans. The confluence of these seismic challenges makes developing students’ social and emotional skills critical to their academic fortunes, says a new guide on reopening schools developed by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, or CASEL, and 40 other education groups, including professional associations and influential philanthropies. The guide lays out what schools need to do to respond comprehensively to the myriad challenges students are facing, which include missed milestones, economic instability, racism, institutional bias, and even the death of loved ones. Regulating emotions, managing stress, empathizing with others, and maintaining relationships—all social-emotional skills—will be key to helping students overcome the trauma and challenges brought on by the pandemic so that they are in a state-of-mind to learn come fall.

The COVID-19 pandemic has many parents scrambling over summer break as several children’s camps have been cancelled. Instead, lots of parents are turning to online learning options for their kids this summer. “We wanted to provide a resource families can do at home that’s really fun and engaging that would still work on that reading comprehension, vocabulary skills, building background knowledge,” said John MacLeod of the National Center for Families Learning. MacLeod says their free virtual camp, Camp Wonderopolis uses the kids’ curiosity as a springboard to work on literacy. In addition to camp Wonderopolis, Parents Magazine lists several virtual camps.

Lindale Park’s Loida Casares, an account manager for Houston Public Media, was listening to NPR one day when she heard about an initiative in Milwaukee to put children’s books in laundromats. Inspired by what she heard, Casares got the go-ahead to put some Little Free Libraries in laundromats – or washaterias, as they are called in Houston. A little less than a year later, she has four set up.The children’s books are the focus. And they are especially important right now. “School is sometimes the only place these kids see books,” she said. “If parents are busy working, they are not (able to) take kids to the library.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics once again plunged into the growing debate over school reopening with a strong new statement Friday, making clear that while in-person school provides crucial benefits to children, “Public health agencies must make recommendations based on evidence, not politics.” The statement also said that “science and community circumstances must guide decision-making.” The AAP is changing tone from the guidance it issued just over two weeks ago. Then, the organization made a national splash by recommending that education leaders and policymakers “should start with a goal of having students physically present in school.” The previous guidance was criticized for saying little about the safety of educators and other school personnel. Friday’s statement, cosigned by the two national teacher unions and AASA, the School Superintendents Association, calls for putting educators as well as other stakeholders at the center of decision-making.

Former CDC Director Thomas Frieden, and former secretaries of education Arne Duncan and Margaret Spellings, lay out eight steps that could help schools find ways to reopen in the coming year. They write, “If we move too fast, ignore science, or reopen without careful planning, this will backfire. We can reopen if we follow commonsense guidelines…The single most important thing we can do to keep our schools safe has nothing to do with what happens in schools. It’s how well communities control the coronavirus throughout the community.”

I had heard about the summer slide, or the way children can academically regress over the summer break, and I wondered what this would mean for our education-deprived children this year. The pandemic will likely have a negative impact on the education of millions of children throughout the United States and around the world, particularly those families without internet access or a caregiver who can oversee their education. Whether this means that I need to push math problems on my kid this summer is another question. Newer research on summer learning loss shows that taking a summer-length break from academics isn’t an inevitable setback for kids, regardless of their socioeconomic status. Also, the break from prescriptive academics could give families a chance to focus on social and emotional learning, teaching our kids much-needed coping skills in these scary and unpredictable times.

Dozens of teachers, parents and district leaders around the country told NPR that the back-to-school season — that beloved annual ritual — has fogged over with confusion. States, districts and the federal government are pushing and pulling in different directions. Scientists are updating their advice to reflect emerging research and the changing course of the pandemic. And parents and educators are finding it hard to make decisions in the murk. What’s at stake: An unknown number of lives, the futures of tens of millions of children, the livelihoods of their caregivers, the working conditions of millions of educators, and people’s trust in a fundamental American institution.

If up to 20% of our learners are suffering from some level of dyslexia or reading disability and many others are emerging language learners in English, the world language classroom can be an oasis for them and a platform for further success. For me as an educator who has a passion for equity in the classroom, it has become increasingly important to continue to differentiate and to uncover potential success stories among the special education population. If you want to learn to differentiate, start with the special education department at your school and recruit some bright young people to give your world language classroom a chance. And then, give them the chance to shine.

These journeys of the imagination explore what it means to be human. The New York Times reviews eight new picture books for children aged three and up.

Parents across the U.S. are wondering what the next school year will hold for their children. While reopening decisions will ultimately be up to state and local officials, President Trump said Tuesday he’ll pressure governors to resume in-person classes. Judy Woodruff talks to Noel Candelaria of the Texas State Teachers Association and Elliot Haspel, an education policy expert and former teacher.

Prior to the pandemic, he EdWeek Research Center surveyed 965 principals and teachers on a host of questions related to the use of digital devices by K-12 students in, and outside of, school. The nationally representative survey shows, for instance, that more than half of educators said their students are less skilled at in-person interactions than they and their peers were at the same age, because they are so accustomed to interacting via devices. And about 40 percent said students need explicit instruction on how to interact with others in person because so much of their experience with human interaction comes from devices. Those findings are arguably even more relevant today, as schools have scrambled this spring to equip more and more students with Chromebooks, iPads, and other digital devices they can use to learn at home. Students will be bringing those devices back to school buildings once they reopen to use in their classrooms. Education Week followed up with interviews of several principals who responded to the survey, such as Tom Denning, the principal of Riley Elementary School in Gold Beach, Ore., for a big-picture view of how the proliferation of digital devices are affecting students, teachers, and school life in general. Here’s what the principals had to say.

The first-grade teacher held up the box that represented her highest hopes for the summer. Facing a sleepy-eyed Zoom gathering of 5- and 6- and 7-year-olds, squirming slightly before computer screens at 9 a.m. Monday morning, Christina Bohringer asked the class if they’d received boxes, too. Everyone nodded: Alexandria City Public Schools had mailed learning kits to every one of the 14,500 students who agreed to participate in the Northern Virginia district’s special edition of summer school, which is free and meant to make up for coronavirus learning loss. Administrators and teachers had worked long hours to prepare a comprehensive month-long curriculum, a mammoth initiative launched in late April that ultimately involved the services of nearly 500 teachers, tech specialists and mental health counselors, required three dozen new hires and cost the district $1.7 million. It represents one strategy being pursued by school districts to repair the educational damage inflicted by the coronavirus pandemic, which shuttered campuses across the United States in March.

In March as schools began to close due to COVID-19, public libraries also began to close, and while some have reopened with new guidelines to help protect patrons from the coronavirus, in most cases typical summer programming for kids has been scrapped in favor of online offerings. Libraries’ efforts during the summer of 2020 range from offering myriad virtual programs, including simplified summer reading programs and loosely structured book clubs, to creating a place to talk and meeting children’s fundamental needs: providing Wi-Fi and any reading material. At the Normal (IL) Public Library, the main goal is making sure young patrons keep reading this summer. This year, the library is simplifying its summer reading challenge. Instead of three or four different options based on age or grade, the 2020 challenge is the same for everyone. Readers are asked to log online either the number of books or pages read or the time spent reading. The prizes that are usually awarded are being replaced with virtual badges and tickets that will be put into a drawing for various rewards that will be given out at the end of the summer.

DaSean Jones is a D.C. father who got through the first part of the pandemic by carefully and successfully choreographing his children’s daily activities. “[I’m] trying not to let every day look exactly the same and go exactly the same way. … It’s a challenge.” Jones, 47, whose main worry is keeping his kids on track despite projected nationwide learning loss from COVID-19, has given them books to read and the occasional essay prompts to answer. But he also reminds himself it’s summer, and the kids need a break. It’s a tough balance to strike. “I’m just trying to keep everybody busy and also just trying to give them the freedom I know they would have” otherwise, he said. Spend a day with the Jones family.

The idea that creating equitable and flexible design can benefit all members of society undergirds universal design, a concept developed by architect Ronald Mace. Rooted in the disability rights movement, universal design is typically applied to products and the built environment, but the principles offer a valuable way to reimagine educational spaces, particularly during the coronavirus crisis. With the rapid switch to distance learning this spring, schools struggled to serve students who are at the margins for a variety of reasons, from disabilities to homelessness to poverty. Recently, as schools planned for reopening, educators attending a design challenge hosted by University of California Berkeley’s Professional Development Providers used universal design principles to think creatively about how schools might function in the fall.

Writing can be an awesome escape. Kids can write about the past and the future and skip the present entirely. Whether they are creating a piece that is mainly fantasy, historical fiction, or science fiction, they can build a new world leaving COVID-19 behind—or address the pandemic head-on and go deep into their emotions and experiences. They can lean on genres such as realistic fiction and romance, or lighten the mood with comedy to explore thoughts and feelings. But how does one teach kids to write for enjoyment? Some dynamite podcasts out there can help them become inspired, skilled writers.

The uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic has upended the daily lives of children across the globe, leaving parents and caregivers struggling to explain the changes. Two medical students in California say their desire to help bridge that gap in understanding inspired them to write a free children’s book, titled “Why We Stay Home.” Authors Samantha Harris and Devon Scott share their story.

This week Vashti Harrison has two books on the children’s middle grade hardcover list (“Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History” at No. 2 and “Little Legends: Exceptional Men in Black History” at No. 7) and two on the children’s hardcover picture book list that she illustrated. Harrison is an author, illustrator and filmmaker (her work has been screened at the New York Film Festival, among others), but she is perhaps best known for her colorful, expressive depictions of iconic Black world-changers from Arthur Ashe to Sojourner Truth to Ida B. Wells. Harrison says she doesn’t love the question always asked of kids, “What do you want to be when you grow up?,” but that it helped shape the lists of whom she included in her books: “I was thinking about how I could showcase this diversity of fields so we have our doctors, lawyers, activists and heroes but also artists. I always wondered, what would have happened if I had learned about this type of art earlier on?”

With states in various stages of reopening, the challenge we face right now is to hold on to the hard-won gains from staying home and shutting down, and to avoid increased transmission. Masks are a big part of the solution. Older children can be a little cranky about adapting to life with masks, but younger children are perfectly placed to learn a new drill. They can be the family monitors, reminding their parents not to forget their face coverings when they leave the house, nudging them to pull up face coverings that slide down off their noses, sitting in disapproving judgment on naked-faced runners or puffing smokers who come too close. Most children enjoy the chance to feel morally superior to adults (and adults often make this all too easy); go ahead and encourage a little righteousness.

From California to Pennsylvania, school librarians are on edge as district and school leaders across the country seek ways to cut back expenses amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The cutbacks come even as school librarians have stepped up in unprecedented ways during the COVID-19 school closures—using social media to provide students with emotional support; giving book recommendations; organizing poetry readings; brokering book access for students; guiding teachers through a complicated web of free online resources; providing tech-support; and helping students navigate a deluge of online news and misinformation. “I have heard this rhetoric that, ‘Well, you’re not in a brick and mortar building, so you’re not really needed,’” said K.C. Boyd, a middle school librarian in Washington, D.C, who has recorded read-alouds for her students and the younger siblings, cousins, and neighbors they supervise. “No! We’re needed more than ever before.”

This week, Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) introduced the Coronavirus Child Care and Education Relief Act (CCCERA)—the largest proposed congressional relief package for education yet, totaling $430 billion. On top of the $30 billion already provided under the CARES Act, Senator Murray’s bill would infuse an additional $345 billion in stabilization funding for higher education and K–12 schools. Like CARES, funds would be split between three emergency relief funds for Governors ($33 billion), state departments of education ($175 billion), and institutions of higher education ($132 billion). Funds could be used for a number of activities to help districts reopen safely and improve remote learning, in addition to addressing learning loss and students’ social and emotional needs.

At the last library class of the year, our wonderful librarian would introduce our summer reading books. Balancing a stack of library bound chapter books in one hand, and holding a book open with the other, she delivered a short blurb for each book. Somehow, she made each book sound more appealing than the one before. I sat on the edge of my chair and wrote down such titles as From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry, and Redwall. As an adult, I still wish that same school librarian would curate a stack of books for my summer reading. Summer reading is a fun, rewarding, and important part of summer vacation. Reading during the summer helps combat the “summer slide” or loss of reading skills that many students experience when not in the classroom. This year especially, with the school year cut short or modified, summer reading is more important than ever. To motivate your child and to make reading more exciting, I have put together a list of 2020’s best summer reading programs, challenges, and book logs.

Angel Castillo Pineda immigrated to the U.S. from Guatemala five years ago. Navigating a new environment and language at East Boston High School, he thought little of future career ambitions—until he met Wensess Raphael, head of Boston Public Schools’ High School to Teacher Program (HSTT). Raphael encouraged the then-high school junior to apply to the program, which supports participants from high school through college in exploring and completing teaching degrees. Angel graduated this spring with plans to become a teacher and a full tuition scholarship from Regis College’s Diverse Educators Program. “I totally see myself coming back to visit and tell high school students about my experience,” Angel said. Angel’s experience represents one of an increasing number of efforts to recruit and retain a more racially diverse teacher workforce in K-12 schools. While initiatives like the HSTT identify students of color in high school and expose them to teaching careers, others seek out paraprofessionals already working in the public school system to become certified teachers. Still others work to retain existing teachers of color.

The nation’s pediatricians have come out with a strong statement in favor of bringing children back to the classroom this fall wherever and whenever they can do so safely. The American Academy of Pediatrics’ guidance “strongly advocates that all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having students physically present in school.” The guidance says “schools are fundamental to child and adolescent development and well-being.” The AAP cites “mounting evidence” that transmission of the coronavirus by young children is uncommon, partly because they are less likely to contract it in the first place.

Samantha Honani’s son hasn’t completed a school assignment in months. After his high school on the Hopi Reservation in Arizona shut down in March, he finished about three weeks of distance learning via his family’s computer. Then, in April, he stopped hearing from his teachers. Caught up in the tumult of Covid-19 and the struggles of sharing one computer with subpar internet, academics faded to an afterthought. “There was a breakdown in communication in the school and the students,” said Honani, who works as a program manager for The Hopi Foundation. “There was no follow-up.” Federally run schools serving Native students were slow to shut and to offer distance learning. Millions in federal relief aid has yet to be disbursed.

In Chicago, as in cities across the country, summer school carries higher stakes this year. After the profound disruption to learning wrought by the coronavirus outbreak, summer instruction will give students a chance to catch up on school work — and credits — they missed this past spring. It will allow some students to get back on track for fall studies or to graduate. With an all-virtual format, it will be a summer learning season like no other. Leaders stressed the need for a more uniform approach across the district after a spring of remote learning in which schools had leeway to design their own plans — and saw mixed results. The district will use the same digital platforms and set requirements for all teachers providing instruction this summer.

School is out, summer is here, and many parents are looking for ways to keep children entertained during these long, hot months. Tackling a science project or exploring a science museum (virtually, of course) can help your child beat boredom and teach them some useful skills. If your kid loves hands-on projects, or if they just like making a mess, there is an array of free science experiment videos available online. Science museums all over the county are offering appealing virtual exhibits and activities around these topics. Your family can also check out science shows on YouTube or listen to a science podcast designed for younger listeners. We have rounded up a host of science resources to keep your child engaged and nurture their natural curiosity until school is back in session.

As schools and states develop plans for students to return to school during the COVID-19 pandemic, the AAP has updated interim guidance to reflect the growing understanding of the virus’ impact on children and adolescents.“COVID-19 Planning Considerations: Guidance for School Re-entry” stresses the fundamental role of schools in providing academic instruction, social and emotional skills, safety, nutrition, physical activity, and mental health therapy. Schools are critical to addressing racial and social inequity. School closure and virtual educational modalities have had a differential impact at both the individual and population level for diverse racial, ethnic, and vulnerable groups, according to the guidance. Evidence from spring 2020 school closures points to negative impacts on learning. “The AAP strongly advocates that all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having students physically present in school,” according to the guidance. These coordinated interventions intend “to mitigate, not eliminate, risk” of SARS-CoV-2.

Being exposed to diverse writers is a significant catalyst for growth for students from elementary school through college, regardless of their background. Gonzaga University’s Jessica Maucione and Michelle H. Martin at the University of Washington have both seen the impact firsthand. The classroom is a place for discussion, Maucione said, and books like Toni Morrison’s “Home” help prompt conversations about race, culture and the experiences of others. Moreover, Maucione cites several studies that find links between fiction reading and the development of human empathy. It’s important for readers to see themselves in books they read, Martin said, but they also need to glimpse the lives of others in order to develop an understanding of difference. “All kids need mirrors, they need windows, they also need sliding glass doors …”

A local 10-year-old who has launched two fundraising projects over the past three years to supply school libraries across the state with books representing people of color has already raised $4,100 toward her efforts. Draya Gohagon, created a GoFundMe drive, Books that Represent All Kids, this month and to date has garnered $2,605 of the $1,500 goal. Draya’s mother, Michelle Gohagon, director of instructional technology and professional development at Middletown Public Schools, is white, and her father, Darrell Gohagon, who works at the state Department of Children and Families, is Black. Her parents have talked with Draya about recent events taking place across the country dealing with racism, Black Lives Matter and related protests.

In a recent op-ed in The 74, Emily Solari, professor of reading education at the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education and Human Development, argued that the coronavirus pandemic has potential to amplify a critical and widening nationwide gap in reading. According to Solari, the good news is that a robust, evidence-based practice exists that can inform how best to teach reading and support students. Unfortunately, too much of that practice is not making its way to teachers and students. In this Q&A, Solari discuss how she sees the pathway to increasing literacy skills in American students – and how now is a critically important time for it to happen.

As part of Colorado’s ongoing effort to get more students reading well, state evaluators recently vetted more than 20 reading curriculums used in kindergarten through third grade. In April, they approved eight of them. But Benchmark Advance, the primary curriculum used in most Denver elementary schools, wasn’t on the list because it didn’t earn a passing score. Two months later, after the curriculum’s publisher, Benchmark Education, made changes to the product and appealed the state’s decision, its score rose enough to make the list for kindergarten through second grade. With new rules requiring Colorado schools to use reading curriculum backed by science, the state’s list of approved curriculum is a big deal. Districts using programs on the list won’t have to make expensive, time-consuming changes in the midst of a coronavirus-fueled budget crisis. Districts that use curriculum that didn’t make the cut — and lots of districts fall into this category — could face penalties if they don’t switch. Benchmark Education was the only publisher to revise its core curriculum during Colorado’s review process and the only one to win such a substantial reversal.

American parents spend more time and money on their children than ever — and that was before the pandemic. Now, with remote school ending for the summer and a far-from-normal fall expected, parenting is becoming only more demanding. It’s not just that children need more supervision, with their usual activities closed. Unlike previous generations of parents, today’s feel pressured to use time with their children for active engagement and continual teaching. Now that pressure is compounded by fears about missing months of education, and about widening gaps between children whose parents can provide significant at-home enrichment and those whose parents cannot.

“My interest and fascination with “The Little Mermaid” was also due to its setting, which bridges two worlds, water and land, for a day in which they become one world. I was especially drawn to the undersea with all its oddities and spectacular creatures. I found that the more I researched, the more I realized how overwhelmingly full of energy and life the oceans are, and I knew it would be challenging to capture the awesomeness found there. My aim was for my art to reflect that overwhelming feeling I experience when exploring these new territories. My research also yielded fascinating details about the various African mythologies around water spirits, or Mami Wata. It was rewarding to have the opportunity for me to paint a mermaid of color, give her a strong voice, and best of all, to experience the joy of giving her a new friend.”

As a former Los Angeles middle school teacher, I know firsthand what statistics show: schools are failing to prepare the majority of African-American students for success. Our Black teenagers are in a learning crisis. Covid-19 is about to make it much worse. African-American students are more likely to be missing out on instruction during this pandemic, since they’re more likely to lack the connectivity needed for remote schooling than their White peers. If we are to increase literacy among African-American youth we need to reach them at a young age, engage them in material that reflects their background, have smaller classrooms and create spaces in which everyone feels safe. Reading is still the best route to liberation. As Frederick Douglass counseled, “Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”

Today in partnership with the Education Development Center (EDC), we’re publishing, “Building Systems in Tandem: Maine’s State and Local Initiatives to Improve Outcomes for Children,” by David Jacobson. Maine is using Jacobson’s First 10 framework to guide and structure its work to improve the quality and coordination of early education for young children and their families.

Four educators share their—and their students’—favorite books, including song picture books and ones focusing on SEL skills, as well as emphasizing the importance of ones that represent “a wide range of experiences.”

Distance learning proved a difficult experiment for many students, teachers and parents this year. Its urgent adoption underscored gaps in access and income. Now, school districts are scrambling to figure out how to adjust plans for the fall. We hear from viewers about their own school experiences, and NewsHour talks to Mark Bedell, superintendent of Missouri’s Kansas City Public Schools.

Throughout the pandemic, many child care centers have stayed open for the children of front-line workers — everyone from doctors to grocery store clerks. YMCA of the USA and New York City’s Department of Education have been caring for, collectively, tens of thousands of children since March, and both tell NPR they have no reports of coronavirus clusters or outbreaks. As school districts sweat over reopening plans, and with just over half of parents telling pollsters they’re comfortable with in-person school this fall, public health and policy experts say education leaders should be discussing and drawing on these real-world child care experiences.

Dr. Sonja Santelises joins ExtraOrdinary Districts in Extraordinary Times to discusses the Black Lives Matter protests and the decisions she faces as superintendent of Baltimore in planning for the return of students in the fall — from what equipment she is having to buy to what changes in the curriculum she will have to make. Although it is clear that many children lost valuable learning time in the spring, Santelises said that for some children remote learning worked very well. One teacher who teaches in one of the hottest of the nation’s coronavirus hotspots has consistently had 95 percent of her students logging into lessons and doing standards-based grade-level work. “She has the relationship, she has the content,” Santelises said. Similarly, Santelises said, the schools that were most successful in engaging students were the ones where relationships and culture had been built before the pandemic

Four teachers discuss specific titles, and common elements, in books that students find popular, including the importance of being able to see themselves in the characters.

The realities of COVID-19 spreading in our communities without a vaccine or herd immunity means that a return to full schools without restrictions is simply out of our reach for many months. We will likely see students returning to school in shifts to classrooms that have been specifically designed to protect students and teachers. Cafeterias, gymnasiums, and libraries may be off limits. Practices we once took for granted, such as community supply stores, learning in groups and soft seating may be on hold for now. All of these things will stretch our ability to redesign our spaces so that students can explore, discover, and connect in meaningful ways. As the number of things that remain out of our control grows (spacing of desks, movement in and between classes, scheduling), there are still a number space design considerations that we can control and which can allow our students to truly benefit from where they learn. Consider these five ways to craft your classroom in these unique moments when we need to balance the health and humanity of our spaces.

A long, long summer is stretching ahead of us — many summer camps and programs are closed, kids are restless and parents and caregivers are stretched thin. But story time is always a little moment of escape. So this year, we want to hear all about your very favorite books for the littlest readers, specifically picture books and very easy chapter books. Is it something you loved as a kid? Something the kids in your life demand at Every. Single. Bedtime? Something they love to read by themselves? Something you gift to every kid you know? Tell us about it! And, of course, there are always those weird books, the ones not necessarily written for kids but that you or a kid you know glommed onto, something that obsessed or transformed you.

My autistic second grader thrived during remote learning. In the past three months at home, he’s moved up several reading levels, improved his writing stamina and conquered fractions. In a virtual session in April, his doctor couldn’t believe he was the same child she’d been seeing in her office. “Do you have to send him back to school?” she asked. At home during the pandemic, I’ve been almost solely responsible for teaching my son. After the first 15-minute weekly meetup with his class, he wasn’t interested in engaging with anyone online again. Instead, I relied on the paper remote learning packets we picked up each week from school and often solicited advice from my next-door neighbor — a special-education teacher — across the fence about how to teach the material. Because of his visual processing disorder, my son has difficulty with reading online and can get distracted when completing work there. So we stuck to paper, which his special-education teacher supported. It worked because my son isn’t overstimulated the way he can be at a school, with hundreds of kids, loud bells, a smelly lunchroom, whistles on the playground and rules, so many rules.

“I can help the next in line,” says Azalea Arredondo, leaning forward on her elbows and craning her neck to make eye contact with the next customer. He’s busy chatting with the person in line behind him. Arredondo signals again, more urgently, “Next in line!” Arrendondo, the all-business “IRS agent,” is in first grade. Her shoulders barely clear the top of the desk, and a giant rainbow-colored bow bounces on top of her head as she swings her legs. Her customers are third-graders queuing up to pay their taxes in Jaguar Valley dollars (JVD), the currency of Jaguar Valley, a Minitropolis site inside Gloria Hicks Elementary School in Corpus Christi, Texas. It’s one of the newest chapters of a program started in 1996 as an attendance incentive at Sam Houston Elementary School in McAllen, Texas. More than two decades later, Minitropolises have boomed to more than 30 communities throughout Texas and Oklahoma, driven by partnerships with the International Bank of Commerce and other local businesses. During that time, their mission has grown from providing old-fashioned encouragement to show up at school to teaching cutting-edge social-emotional and project-based learning skills.

I broke the rules. Under normal circumstances I won’t consider a children’s book for this podcast unless that title is less than 20 years old. But since I made that rule in the first place, I guess I’m the one who gets to break it. And today’s book is, in its blood, a rule breaker. In the course of this episode I attempt to encapsulate all of Jacqueline Woodson’s major awards (this is a difficult thing to attempt, by the way), Kate and I honor Juneteenth, and we try desperately to figure out why this book never won any Caldecott love (to add to its Newbery Honor love).

Young children who are learning English require special consideration during virtual instruction due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Approximately 1 in 6 children in kindergarten and 1st grade in the United States are learning English as a second (or third) language. As teachers grapple with the monumental task of providing remote instruction to English-language learners, it’s important that state and district leaders provide extensive support and clear guidelines for engaging their ELLs. As state and district leaders consider outreach through email, phone calls, and physical copies of instructional resources for providing equitable access to possible remote instruction when schools reopen, we offer the following evidence-informed suggestions for consideration.

f you’re a parent working from home with minimal or no help in the childcare department, this summer is likely going to be tough. Even getting an hour or two to focus on your work can seem like a dream when your kid is stuck inside and clamoring for attention. Michaeleen Doucleff is a reporter on NPR’s Science Desk, and she’s been feeling this stress big time. Up against a publishing deadline for a book she’s writing called Hunt, Gather, Parent about child-rearing traditions from other cultures, Doucleff was also fielding requests from her 4-year-old daughter, Rosy: “Draw me a narwhal!” “Read me a book!” “Bring me some milk!” Frustrated by Rosy’s interruptions, Doucleff decided she would retrain her daughter to occupy herself and demand less attention.

If the coronavirus pandemic placed issues of racial equity to the front burner, the historic weeks of protest have brought the topic to a rolling boil. Some districts have responded by reaffirming their commitment to racial equity, or by pledging to evaluate their teaching for bias. Others have severed ties with local police departments that have provided security in schools. But those who work to promote equity in schools see an opportunity to attack the deeper-rooted structures in school that perpetuate racial bias—if leaders are willing to see opportunity in the turmoil. Education Week asked six district leaders to share specific practices and processes they use in their school systems to promote equity. A common thread? All of them require deep, sometimes difficult reflection on district and school practices and assumptions that might otherwise go unexamined.

Working from home with small children, an ordeal and a privilege, has been de rigueur since agrarianism got going. Parents managed it for thousands of years — without day care, compulsory schooling or camps. What did children used to do all day? Short answer: They worked and and they played, often with minimal adult supervision. Unfortunately, as Steven Mintz, the author of “Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood,” told me, “The pandemic has exaggerated and intensified the worst features of children’s play today: adult intrusion; the decline of physical, outdoor and social play; and mediation by screens.” Ow. So, how do we adults ameliorate that while staying safe, employed and reasonably sane? Here are some ideas.

There is no one answer for what the coming school year will look like, but it won’t resemble the fall of 2019. Wherever classrooms are open, there will likely be some form of social distancing and other hygiene measures in place that challenge traditional teaching and learning. Future outbreaks will make for unpredictable waves of closures. Virtual learning will continue. And all this will happen amid a historic funding crunch. American education has long been full of innovators practicing alternatives to the mainstream. When the giant, uncontrolled experiment of the pandemic rolled across the country, certain approaches proved their mettle in new ways. Here are some ideas that seem newly relevant given the constraints of 2020 and beyond.

This essay, by Hayden Miskinis, is one of the top three winners in the middle school category of our Seventh Annual Student Editorial Contest for which we received 1,242 entries. “I look down at my book. I slowly read the first line of jumpy letters that won’t stay still. It takes me a minute to find the next line, as my eyes jump around. This is a repeating process until I’m at the end of the page. This doesn’t just happen to me; it happens to 70-80 percent of dyslexic students in schools, and yet schools aren’t providing resources, teachers aren’t getting trained and people don’t even really understand dyslexia. … What is dyslexia? I didn’t know until 2015 when I was faced with the truth as to why I wasn’t progressing in school. I had been given interventions through a program called Title I which helps kids who don’t have access to books or reading in their homes, but it wasn’t working for me. I had plenty of books; I just couldn’t read them. What I needed were interventions that would work for me.”