Today’s Literacy Headlines

Parents have worried all year that arts education will be among the casualties claimed by the COVID-19 pandemic and its resulting pressures on local school budgets. Depending on how long districts are forced to cut programs, fire or reassign staff, and cope with remote learning, some advocates warn, little money or instructional time could be left over for activities outside of core academic subjects. Those concerns may grow louder following the release of research this fall that shows young students receiving measurable academic and social-emotional benefits from exposure to the arts. Even a few brief trips to cultural institutions can lift engagement, tolerance, course grades, and standardized test scores for participating students, the authors find. The study, circulated as a working paper by Brown University’s Annenberg Institute, offers the latest round of findings from the first-ever multi-visit experiment measuring the long-term effects of field trips.

Around the country, educators and local television stations have teamed up to help teachers make their broadcast debuts and engage children who are stuck in the doldrums of distance learning. The idea — in some ways a throwback to the early days of public television — has supplemented online lessons for some families, and serves a more critical role: reaching students who, without reliable internet access or a laptop at home, have been left behind. In some places, the programs air on weekends or after school. Elsewhere, districts have scheduled time to watch it during the school day. In New York, the program airs every weekday on a public television channel, part of a network of PBS stations working with school districts. Fox stations in several cities are airing teachers’ lessons as well.

Host Michel Martin speaks with Aaron Carapella of Tribal Nations Maps about children’s books that address the history and experiences of Native Americans. Carapella is the creator of Tribal Nations Maps. That’s a site dedicated to mapping the lands that Native Americans lived on prior to European settlement. And he’s recently launched a section of the site to highlight children’s books focused on characters and stories rooted in the Native American experience.

The shift to online learning has drastically widened existing equity gaps in U.S. education, driving drops in attendance, college applications and academic performance among the nation’s most vulnerable students: children who are low-income, Black or Hispanic, as well as those with learning disabilities and those whose first language is not English. All too often, homeless children — of whom there are 2.5 million every year in America — combine these factors. The shuttering of schools nationwide in March immediately shattered any semblance of stability for millions of homeless children who depend on schools for food, emotional support, or even just a warm, uncomplicated place to think. Trying to learn inside shelters for the past nine months, students have faced spotty WiFi, crowded rooms, high noise levels and harassment from some peers who deduce, over Zoom, that they lack a home.

2020 was — to borrow a phrase from a popular kid’s book — a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year. And for parents, one of the year’s hardest jobs was trying to explain current events to young kids. “We are living in challenging times,” says children’s book author Matt de la Peña — and kids are taking a lot of it in. “While you and I read the news, watch the news, listen to the news — our young children are watching and reading us, and so they’re not getting the whole picture,” he says. De la Peña believes books can explore deep or difficult issues without hitting them head-on. “I don’t think the job of a picture book is to answer questions,” he says. “I think it’s just to explore interesting topics.” He offers several suggestions for books that can help young kids think about tough subjects.

No matter how districts respond to the COVID-19 pandemic—fully virtual, in person, or hybrid instruction—some families remain unsatisfied. Yet recent data collected in Forest Grove, Ore., demonstrate that relationship-focused communication between families and schools can mitigate some of the frustrations of pandemic-induced educational disruptions. In June, we surveyed approximately 1,500 parents in the Forest Grove district to learn which practices were most helpful during the first wave of distance learning. The parents who responded were primarily Latino (40 percent) and white (55 percent), which matches the student population. The responses sent a resounding message: Communication is key. Parents praised teachers who kept them informed about classwork and offered ways to supervise at-home learning.

This year, the fields of outdoor learning and green schoolyards reached a tipping point, as thousands of schools around the country took their chairs, desks and easels—and log stumps, straw bales, picnic blankets and Wi-Fi—outside, to study under leafy tree canopies and shady tents. Ten months into the pandemic, there are still too many students who don’t have access to devices and reliable broadband, and who live in home environments that are not conducive to virtual learning. For these students in particular, and all students in general, we’re asking school district and site leaders to consider using—or continue using—their outdoor spaces for learning, because the risk of virus transmission is roughly 20 times lower outdoors than indoors.

As 2020 comes to an end, let’s reflect on the year behind us—a year full of new experiences, of meeting and overcoming new challenges. Throughout the year, we published a variety of Literacy Now blog posts to help educators through these tough times. Here is a list of the top 10 most read Literacy Now blog posts of 2020. First up: “Observing Young Readers and Writers: A Tool for Informing Instruction” by Alessandra E. Ward, Nell K. Duke, and Rachel Klingelhofer examines the LTR-WWWP, or The Listening to Reading-Watching White Writing Protocol, a new tool educators can use to assess students’ reading and writing skills when listening to students read aloud and watching them write. The LTR-WWWP is thoroughly explained for readers in this post, along with access to the tool and resources on how to use the tool and what it looks like in action.

Any education journalist will remember 2020 as the year that all the planned student profiles, school spotlights and policy investigations got thrown out the window as we scrambled to capture and process the disorienting new normal of virtual classrooms. Here at The 74, our top stories from the past nine months were dominated by our reporting in this area, by features that framed the challenges and opportunities of distance learning, that surfaced solutions and innovations that were working for some districts, and that pointed to the bigger questions of how disrupted back-to-back school years may lead to long-term consequences for this generation of students. But with the first vaccines being administered this month, we’re seeing our first glimpse of a light at the end of this chaotic tunnel — hope that the virus will quickly dissipate, that schools will fully reopen, and that we’ll then find a way to help all of America’s 74 million children catch up. Here are our 20 most read and shared articles of the year.

With millions of kids still learning remotely, the learning losses are piling up. The pandemic is causing Black and Hispanic students in particular to fall further behind their white peers. Former Education Secretary John King Jr. thinks a national tutoring corps is one way to help make up for lost time. Older students and graduates could receive credit or be paid to tutor younger students. “We have decades of research showing that high intensity tutoring can help students make up lost ground academically very quickly,” King tells Mary Louise Kelly on All Things Considered. King now heads the nonprofit The Education Trust, which works to close opportunity gaps in education. He talked about the challenges facing schools when they fully reopen. Here are excerpts of the interview.

More than two years after Cynthia Peitich Smith (Muscogee Creek Nation) decided she could help harness and hone the talents of Native writers for children, the first books in her Heartdrum imprint begin arriving on shelves this month. Leading Heartdrum, which she helms with HarperCollins vice president and editorial director Rosemary Brosnan, is the latest in a long list of accomplishments. She’s a New York Times bestselling author who’s written stories for ages that range from picture-book to young adult audiences, and in formats that include prose, poetry and graphic novels. Heartdrum’s books aim to fill a significant gap in the market: Only 1% of children’s books published in 2019 featured Native or indigenous characters, according to the most recent survey from the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. By design, the books are also page-turning contemporary stories, Smith said.

The coronavirus pandemic has brought a host of new challenges to teaching the foundational skills of reading and writing. With masks, social distancing and millions of young children nationwide learning online at home—either several days a week or full-time—teachers say they have to find new ways to tackle literacy instruction, so students don’t miss a crucial window in kindergarten through second grade. “When kids are just starting out is when they really need a teacher who can see what’s going on day to day,” said Timothy Shanahan, a literacy expert and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois. “My heart goes out to every teacher trying to deal with this. I don’t know how I would teach a first-grader to read at a distance.” At P.S. 105 in the Bronx, teachers tackle literacy instruction in new ways amid coronavirus restrictions.

Authors Valentina Gonzalez & Melinda Miller answer questions about their book Reading & Writing with English Learners: A Framework for K-5.

Selecting the year’s Best Books has always been a challenge. Sifting through the stellar titles that have graced our monthly Stars list. Meetings upon meetings of (sometimes heated) discussions about the merit of this work and the timeliness of that one. And of course, reading, reading, and more reading. Art can give us a language to interpret the chaos of this world. Most of all, we believe that the most important thing we can give the young people who will read these 108 titles is the message that there is still hope in these times of uncertainty. The following selections offer a way to share the message that rings through Tami Charles’s revelatory book: “You, dear child, matter.” We are supremely privileged to have had the great Bryan Collier, illustrator of Charles’s All Because You Matter, create our Best Books cover.

At the Education Development Center, where I work to support young children’s STEM literacy, we are seeing successful virtual instruction strategies and practices emerging in the preschool teaching community, particularly among Head Start educators. Best practices range from the “take care of yourself” mantra that we all hear so much these days (and need to hear) to suggestions for onscreen read-alouds. Here are some ideas that we hope will be useful to early childhood educators.

My hopes for next year are different … they are quieter, simpler, more cautious, and I find I am surrounding myself with books that offer me a quiet hope and a profound story; books that lift me up when I am down, and books that speak to hardship and change, but where change and hardship are not the end of the story. Here are just a few of the most meaningful books my kids and I have shared this year, and a few we are really looking forward to.

For American families and their children, school is more than just a building. It’s a social life and a community, an athletic center and a place to get meals that aren’t available at home. The pandemic has disrupted — and continues to disrupt — the lives of U.S. students in profound ways. Many kids haven’t set foot in their schools since March, when most in-person schooling shut down across the country. Teachers are working tirelessly to educate their students online, but they are growing increasingly anxious about the kids who aren’t showing up at all. An estimated 3 million students may have dropped out of school learning since March, according to Bellwether Education Partners, a national nonprofit that focuses on underserved youth. The group’s study cited a lack of Internet access, housing insecurity, disabilities and language barriers as major obstacles to attending virtual classes during the pandemic.

The pandemic has driven the national education conversation to focus on getting kids back in schools and attempting to repair the widening gaps in students’ educations. As a former third grade teacher in Memphis, I’ve been thinking about how schools are going to handle this enormous task of addressing the academic challenges created by the pandemic. One thing I know from my teaching experience is that Tennessee schools already have a tool at their disposal: a program called Response to Intervention and Instruction. The program is state-mandated, so every school uses it. But it’s also severely underfunded relative to the enormous need. So despite teaching in a variety of schools and neighborhoods, I have never once seen a successful, thriving RTI² program. If done well, though, it could be exactly what students need. Here’s how it should work.

Michigan has spent tens of millions of taxpayer dollars aimed at improving early literacy, yet roughly one in three Michigan fourth-graders don’t have basic reading skills, a figure that has hardly budged in two decades. Sen. Jim Runestad says he can help explain why: In the 50 years since he was an elementary schooler with dyslexia grappling with a “mishmash of letters” in English class, little has changed for people like him. Maeve Janssens, an 8-year-old from northern Michigan who was diagnosed with dyslexia this summer, knows the feeling of struggling to decode text on a page. “It just didn’t click in my brain,” she said. “I felt like I couldn’t do anything.”

President-elect Joe Biden has chosen Miguel Cardona, Connecticut’s education chief and a lifelong champion of public schools, to serve as education secretary. The selection delivers on Biden’s promise to nominate someone with experience working in public education. Cardona is a product of public schools, starting when he entered kindergarten unable to speak English. According to a source familiar with the President-Elect’s decision, Cardona was selected in part because of his experiences as a former public school teacher, an administrator, a public school parent and someone with the experience to do the job on his first day in office. The source said one of Cardona’s top priorities as education secretary will be to work with state and local officials to get kids back to school safely amid the pandemic, which Biden aims to achieve within the first 100 days of his presidency.

Alittle over a year ago, Miguel Cardona was an assistant superintendent of a 12-school district south of Hartford, Connecticut. Now that state’s education commissioner could be President-elect Joe Biden’s choice to lead the nation’s 131,000 public schools after months of closures that have left many children roughly more than a year behind in learning. A graduate of the Meriden Public Schools, as well as a former elementary teacher and principal in the district, the Hispanic leader, who began school speaking no English himself, is viewed by some observers to still be close enough to the classroom to understand educators’ concerns. A focus on reducing achievement gaps is what stands out to those who don’t know him personally.

Nine months after the pandemic closed down Stedwick Elementary School, learning in suburban Montgomery County is still all remote. But while most students plug in on laptops from home, some are on campus, working from holiday-decorated classrooms. They are part of “equity hubs” that bring small groups of children together, so that parents who struggle financially have a safe, supervised place for their children to focus on online learning. The hubs are akin to the “pandemic pods” that more affluent families have created, often hiring tutors or teachers. Among those who participate, the average family income is less than $30,000 a year, and nearly all children qualify for free and reduced-price school meals. Families pay up to $50 a month per child. “This is an effort for equity for people who can’t afford to hire a teacher or do the things that other parts of the county can do,” said Byron Johns, co-founder of the Black and Brown Coalition for Educational Equity and Excellence, which advocated for the project.

Today’s education system resembles much of what you’d see in the early 1900s: rote memorization, a teacher speaking to dozens of pupils who must remain silent unless called upon, curriculum at scale. Coronavirus-related distance learning pushed that same operation online, and because of the severity of the crisis, educators and parents understandably yearn for getting back to normal. But for educator Gholdy Muhammad, normal hasn’t served all students well, especially in literacy education, and no amount of testing or data has changed that. Instead of continuing with this form of education, Muhammad developed a model of learning that strikes more deeply into who we are and what agency we have in the world. In her book “Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy,” Muhammad, a professor of education at Georgia State University, looks to 1830s-era literary societies as a highly engaged model for teaching and learning that can cultivate literacy, intellect and self-efficacy.

From “the father of the Underground Railroad” to the first woman vice president, these Black action figures are poetry in motion.

Six educators discuss strategies they’ve used to encourage students to revise their writing, such as demonstrating their own practice.

If you had asked one of Lisa Hepburn’s fifth-grade students to pronounce the word “pandemic” not too long ago, he’d try “pandora,” “pandemonium” or “just kind of guess whatever.” But more recently, Hepburn, a reading specialist at Randall Elementary School, watched that same student “who’s reading at a second-grade level as a fifth-grader chunk out words like ‘tranquility.’” She credits the “science of reading,” a literacy teaching method the Madison Metropolitan School District is shifting toward as it confronts low reading proficiency rates among its students. It’s a move away from the “balanced literacy” approach the district has had in the past, in which literacy is taught through a variety of readings and word studies, to a more phonics-focused format of teaching students how to read.

Cueing has, for decades now, been a staple of early reading instruction. The strategy—which is also known as three-cueing, or MSV—involves prompting students to draw on context and sentence structure, along with letters, to identify words. But it isn’t the most effective way for beginning readers to learn how to decode printed text. In 2019, an EdWeek Research Center survey found that 75 percent of K-2 and elementary special education teachers use the method to teach students how to read, and 65 percent of college of education professors teach it. Now, there are signs that cueing’s hold on reading instruction may be loosening. Recently, one of the most influential reading programs in the country took a step away from the method—raising questions about whether other publishers will follow suit, and whether changes to written materials will lead to shifts in classroom practice.

Photo essay: Remote learning is extra hard for millions of students who lack reliable internet at home. Wi-Fi buses are the solution in this Michigan community.

We are all dealing with high levels of stress right now. On top of normal pressures, current events are causing stress related to job and financial worries, health risks, and disruption to our normal routines. We need to find ways to effectively manage our stress—and practicing SEL activities can help. As an educator, you are in a unique position to provide stability and support to your students and their families during uncertain times. One of the best ways you can help students is by looking after their social-emotional health. Here are 10 SEL activities to help your students learn effective stress management.

For many school districts across the nation, this week is the last one before the holidays, and most large ones are only offering remote instruction. Biden has promised to safely and responsibly reopen the “majority” of schools for in person learning within his first 100 days. This would entail swinging open the physical doors on at least half of the nation’s 130,000-odd schools by the beginning of May. What this timeline portends, especially for the majority of large districts that have intermittently closed or remained physically shuttered, are more enervating stories ahead about learning loss and missing students, as well as harrowing accounts of child abuse, adolescent depression, and suicide. But it hasn’t been all gloom and doom. Indeed, there have been genuinely encouraging developments that provide some reason for Yuletide cheer in a year that’s been otherwise wanting for good news. Five trends in particular could pay dividends when the country finally kicks this godforsaken plague to the curb.

We know more about the science of reading than the science of reading instruction. In other words, we know a lot more about what components are associated with improved outcomes for each stage of reading development (e.g., phonemic awareness and the alphabetic principle are essential for beginning readers) than we do about how to teach all these components to a class of students with diverse learning needs. Similarly, we know more about interventions for students with mild to moderate reading difficulties than we do about students with severe reading difficulties. Students with very low reading skills—those at the bottom 10th percentile of word reading and lower—have been challenging to impact. Finally, in policy development, we have not capitalized on theory and science for effectively implementing new practices in schools. Still, there is much we do know that can support excellent instruction. Both here and in two online supplements, we offer guidance to prevent and address reading difficulties. The key to improved outcomes for the vast majority of struggling readers, including those with a reading disability, is enhanced core instruction—and that means enhanced curricula, assessments, pre-service and in-service professional development, and supports.

Children beginning their school careers during the pandemic are likely to need a lot more support than usual to build their foundational skills for reading. The most comprehensive study to date of pandemic-related learning loss in the earliest grades finds that some 40 percent of 1st graders have come to school this fall significantly behind in early literacy skills—particularly around phonics—and they will need intensive interventions to prevent them from ending the year reading below grade level. The study confirms that even the youngest students are experiencing the so-called “COVID slide,” and counters some recent studies that suggested there have been minimal losses in reading.

In a year of extraordinary hardship, children’s authors and illustrators have continued to do what they do best: to engage and entertain young readers and their families through stories. A number of picture books have directly addressed the challenges of the pandemic, while also paying tribute to the everyday heroes who have emerged in its wake. Looking ahead at 2021, LeUyen Pham’s forthcoming Outside, Inside reflects the solace she felt while going on daily walks in her Los Angeles neighborhood during quarantine. And next spring, from the opposite coast, Caldecott Medalist and longtime New Yorker Brian Floca will offer his picture book ode to the resilience of this city—and all cities—and to essential workers, Keeping the City Going. Floca, who has lived in New York for two decades, told PW that his new book originated in the form of everyday observations and drawings. “I started at the end of March or April, doing sketches of what I was seeing in New York, the city where I have lived for a long time but that suddenly felt like a new place. … I began looking at vehicles: ambulances, trucks, and delivery people on bikes. It struck me that, while so many of us are hunkered down, these are the people who are still going to work.”

When school buildings closed last spring, author Steve Sheinkin watched as his peers mobilized to help educators and kids get through the difficult end to the school year with online read-alouds, free writing and drawing classes, and Zoom author visits. As summer was ending and it was clear that the coming school year clearly would not resemble anything close to normal, the children’s nonfiction author wanted to do something different for kids and teachers. Sheinkin came up with the idea of quizzing authors on their own books. Looking for a collaborator, he called Stacey Rattner—a “superlibrarian,” according to Sheinkin. “His initial idea was to have us ask the author questions to see how well they know their own book, and I suggested, What if we add a young fan?” says Rattner, school librarian at Castleton (NY) Elementary School. “We basically had the format after our first phone conversation.”

As new political leaders prepare to take office in Washington and around our country, schools continue to face an unprecedented scenario that will shape an entire generation of young people. It is incumbent upon the administration of President-elect Joe Biden, the new Congress, and local and state officials to prioritize education as a critical step in our nation’s recovery. Here are some clear actions our elected officials can take to ensure students are more prepared for the future. #3: Double down on the science of reading. We’ve known for decades—at least since the National Reading Panel report—that phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary, and text comprehension are essential elements for building strong readers. Yet, for too long, many of America’s students have been denied this instruction. There are encouraging signs this is shifting, but we must not let the focus on quality literacy instruction slip as we address pandemic-related challenges.

Michaela Weeks, 7, just has to walk outside her front door in Hutto to get to school during the coronavirus pandemic. Once a week she steps onto a bus parked outside her house. The Hutto school district every week sends one of its buses to 20 special education students, including Weeks, to make sure they get a one-on-one lesson with a teacher. One recent morning, Weeks sat at a table on the bus with her teacher, Lou Quinlan, with both wearing masks. Quinlan read the 7-year-old a story and then asked her questions to see what she could remember about it. Michaela’s mother, Aunchelle Weeks, said her daughter is doing much better in school now that she gets a lesson once a week on the bus. “She goes in there and has the teacher’s undivided attention,” said Aunchelle Weeks. “She’s not feeling rushed by another student and it’s amazing what a huge difference it’s making.”

In 2020, we caught up with some of our favorite stars-turned-children’s authors, including Natalie Portman for “Natalie Portman’s Fables,” Joanna Gaines for “The World Needs Who You Were Meant to Be,” Alyssa Milano for “Project Class President,” Misty Copeland for “Bunheads,” Neil Patrick Harris for “The Magic Misfits” and Gabrielle Union for “Welcome to the Party.” Judy Blume also caught up with Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager for the 50th anniversary of “Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret,” and “Baby-Sitters Club” author Ann M. Martin told Jenna where she thought her characters would be now, after the success of the new Netflix series. There were so many more children’s books we loved in 2020, at a time when parents and kids were unable to browse in bookstores. Here are 25 of our favorite children’s books of 2020.

As rural schools in my home state of Vermont planned for the start of school this academic year, many education professionals here anticipated that a return to in-person schooling was likely due to the relatively few cases of Covid statewide. In the case of my K–6 school, the Albert Bridge School, we were able to turn some things that were previously considered challenges into advantages, including small class sizes. Our class sizes range from eight to 12 students, making social distancing easier. Some factors we’ve invested in over the last few years include a half-time coordinator on staff who supports place-based outdoor education; and we had a strong school and community identity centered around what we loosely call “The Mountain Curriculum.” With these pieces already in place, we could expand our approach to educating students outdoors while fostering connections within our community.

Each reader walks into a text with motivations, knowledge and experiences. They interact with the text for different purposes and extend what is read through responses. By exploring any reader’s authentic, self-directed responses, teachers and librarians can gain insight into students’ identity and their reading development, as well as their personal interests and goals. Unfortunately, for many students, the reading response activities traditionally assigned and encouraged at school—such as book reports, comprehension tests, cookie-cutter projects, and other performative reading activities—center knowledge about a specific text and don’t include the reader. Looking at samples of reading response activities online, most offerings are worksheets with generic comprehension prompts or book report templates. It is difficult to see how such assignments help students become more proficient readers (and writers) or joyful ones.

I like fiction. I even know some talented people who make money composing it. But as a nonfiction writer, when I go into schools, I am sad that the books students choose to read are almost always fiction. A child thinks: Nonfiction? You mean textbooks. Ugh. That’s supposed to be changing. The Common Core State Standards, which have had a marked effect on teaching lately, say nonfiction is essential. Children need a steady diet of it to accumulate the background knowledge that will allow them to recognize more words as they learn to read.

Many of us discover as children that books can be like secret doorways. They might be at the back of a wardrobe or in the side of a giant tree, but wherever the doors lead, once we step through, time will cease to matter and our everyday worries will disappear. Things might get dicey, as there are bound to be stormy nights, impenetrable forests, monsters and witches, but in the end, and this is most important, everything will be all right. I’m almost 50 and both of my daughters are nearly grown, so it is rare that I pick up a children’s book anymore. What a delightful surprise, then, to be handed three new books that so perfectly evoke that childhood sensation of falling in love with reading. At a library or bookstore, these would be shelved in the “young reader” section, but I believe in 2020 we all might find a little solace in stories about kindness and bravery, about winter giving way to spring and suffering to joy.

San Antonio teacher Celina Quintanilla has names for the two groups of 5th-graders she is simultaneously teaching — those in her classroom are the “roomers” and those on Zoom are the “zoomers.” It’s an arrangement that has sparked resistance from teacher’s unions across the country as teachers say they feel stretched too thin to be effective. The entire class started remotely in August, and slowly the school has brought back those whose parents agreed to send them. The first invitations went out to children with special needs, no internet connection, or economic hardships that made learning difficult. Teachers also reached out to students who simply were not engaging over Zoom. Those are the students who drew Quintanilla into teaching. “The louder students who speak up more, you can see that they are struggling.” But her heart goes out to the kids like her who are shier, who don’t speak up. That’s the kind of kid she was, as she struggled with a learning disability.

After a year being cooped up in houses, why not delight young readers this holiday season with stories about the joy and wonder of flight? They can learn how the 747 was built, enjoy backyard star-gazing, and follow a little moth who hopes to land on the moon. Our selection includes titles for all ages, from new readers to teens.

We’re tired of being isolated, and for some of us this will be a no-Christmas. All of this is hard on the kids, some of whom are stressed from going back and forth between school and distance learning and missing their grandparents. It’s a time for books that soothe us, stress kindness to humans and animals, and bring smiles to our face. So today’s roundup includes only books that offer good thoughts and the best of humanity. Happy birthday India Opal Buloni and a celebratory “woof” to Winn-Dixie. It’s hard to believe that Minnesotan Kate DiCamillo’s novel “Because of Winn-Dixie,” is 20 years old. The phrase “modern classic” is thrown around too much, but DiCamillo’s big-hearted story of a lonely girl and her scruffy dog deserves that description.

Schools and libraries across the country and the world faced daunting challenges in 2020 as buildings shut down and millions of students shifted to online learning during the pandemic. These facts and figures about schools, libraries, books, and learning help tell the story of this unprecedented year. Amid all the uncertainty and stress in 2020, there were some bright spots: Audiobook sales surged, more kids tuned into podcasts, and children’s book sales continued to grow.

For every child in an afterschool program in the U.S., three are waiting for a spot, according to new data. And the demand for programs has increased by 60 percent since 2004. More than half of the 31,000 respondents to the Afterschool Alliance’s “America After 3 p.m.” survey said cost is what’s keeping their children out of afterschool programs, which average about $100 per week. A lack of transportation and available programs in their neighborhoods were other common barriers. The 7.8 million students enrolled in afterschool programs represent the lowest participation since 2009, down sharply from a peak of 10 million students in 2014. And fewer students from low-income households are involved: 2.7 million this year, compared to 4.6 million six years ago.

As school districts and families continue to try and combat the educational and economic impact of the pandemic, congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez launched a volunteer tutoring program to help students in her New York City district. A pilot of about 125 tutors went well. By early December, the program had conducted approximately 100 sessions with students and was ready to expand toward its goal of serving 1,000 students by June. Studies have shown the effectiveness of one-on-one tutoring, and many communities are looking toward tutoring programs to help with the pandemic’s impact on education. Ocasio-Cortez and her staff have obviously created a huge network of volunteer, but Homework Helpers could be a model for a much bigger idea.

We bring you this year’s Big Ideas in Education in the spirit of change and transformation. This report, written by Education Week reporters and editors, questions some basic assumptions about how you do your work, whether you’re a teacher, school or district leader, or a policymaker. And it is likely to even make you feel a bit uncomfortable, but we hope it will also inspire you to think about how and why you do the work that you do. Many of the essays also include original survey data from more than 1,000 teachers who shared their opinions on the role of robots in the classroom, the goal of big technology, the cause of math anxiety, the messiness of school governance, and more.

Nationally, 8 percent of American Indian and Alaska Natives, and 15 percent of Pacific Islander students are ELs. These students don’t fit into the conventional EL profile, that is, students who are adding English to another language spoken at home, and therefore can be harder to identify. Unlike other ELs, Native American ELs, such as those in Montana, do not necessarily speak their heritage language, but also haven’t necessarily developed their academic English skills enough to support content learning. As with other ELs whose language is influenced by the immigrant background of their parents, Native American ELs have had their English acquisition framed by parents/grandparents, family members, or guardians who may have been ELs themselves.

Brain scans reveal crucial reading circuitry flickering to life when young readers print letters and then read them. The effect largely disappears when letters are typed or traced. We look at two studies which compare handwriting to typing—both conclude that handwriting taps into brain networks associated with deeper learning. That doesn’t mean we should toss out our keyboards, though. Kids with processing disabilities like dysgraphia or dyslexia often benefit from computer technology, and all kids need to develop digital skills.

My two young daughters, ages 3 and 6, are big pretenders. 2020 has turned their world, real and imaginary, upside down. Explaining all that’s going on around them—a global pandemic, the struggle against systemic racism, protests, a volatile presidential election—at a level that they can understand, and in a way that teaches and moves them, without inducing anxiety has been challenging. As a parent, I always turn to children’s books to guide me, and this year, some of my favorite new books that have come out are pathways to conversations and teachable moments, while others provide a needed laugh, a lighter note or a breath of fresh air.

Simultaneous crises of a pandemic and recession are further straining a special education system that has long struggled to effectively serve students with disabilities. Chronic shortfalls in federal funding have burdened local education agencies and families, and — in the most extreme cases — denied these children access to quality education. But some families and their advocates are hopeful that the pandemic could prompt a reckoning and systemic change. During distance learning, educators have needed to get creative to reach all their students, leading to new ways of collaborating with parents and approaches to instruction that education experts say could be integrated into how schools operate going forward.

How do we prepare 21st-century kids for challenges and jobs that we at present cannot even describe? The Best STEM Books help by celebrating convergent and divergent thinking, analysis and creativity, persistence, and the sheer joy of figuring things out. Best STEM Books winners explore problems and possible solutions in the scientific world and, where applicable, in the lives of the protagonists. Instead of focusing on specific content, the Best STEM Books emphasize real-world issues that cross disciplinary boundaries. Teachers can use these books to foster and model “minds-on” work. Parents, grandparents, and other caregivers can involve even the very youngest children in the process of STEM thinking.

Even in hybrid districts, some students have been learning remotely, either part or full time. In short, online learning is the reality for a majority of students this fall. We are still starved for data on what this all means. The earliest standardized test scores coming out show modest learning loss for students in math, but there are worries that the most at-risk students are not being tested at all. For this story I talked to educators in six states, from California to South Carolina. For the most part they say things have improved since the spring. But they are close to burnout, with only a patchwork of support. They say the heart of the job right now is getting students connected with school and keeping them that way — both technologically and even more importantly, emotionally. Here are five lessons learned so far.

As the pandemic disrupted life across the entire globe, teachers scrambled to transform their physical classrooms into virtual—or even hybrid—ones, and researchers slowly began to collect insights into what works, and what doesn’t, in online learning environments around the world. Meanwhile, neuroscientists made a convincing case for keeping handwriting in schools, and after the closure of several coal-fired power plants in Chicago, researchers reported a drop in pediatric emergency room visits and fewer absences in schools, reminding us that questions of educational equity do not begin and end at the schoolhouse door. Edutopia reviewed hundreds of educational studies in 2020 and then highlighted 10 of the most significant—covering topics from virtual learning to the reading wars and the decline of standardized tests.

Think back to the books you read as a child — there’s a good chance that some of them had to do with the environment, nature, or animals. Children’s books are so important — not only do they help little ones learn new words and concepts, but they can also help shape children’s perception of the world. So for any budding young environmentalists in your life, a children’s book about the environment would make a perfect gift.

Many children in the U.S. live their lives in two or more languages: A child of Guatemalan descent may read bedtime stories in Spanish with their parents and learn in English at school—and perhaps speak K’iche’ with their grandparents. Research has shown that these multilingual children may have strong math skills, conflict resolution skills, and executive function skills. By welcoming the whole multilingual child, including their linguistic practices, we send a powerful message that children from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds contribute to the vibrancy of our early childhood programs. Multilingualism is an asset to be nurtured in our classrooms, and the following five strategies can help teachers strategically and intentionally celebrate and extend multilingual children’s existing linguistic expertise as well as their participation in learning activities both in person and virtually.

It’s now official. Unless Congress pushes back on Secretary DeVos’s request—which seems unlikely—the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests of fourth and eighth grade reading and math that were scheduled for 2021 will be deferred at least a year. That means this vital source of data on student achievement won’t tell us anything between spring ‘19 and autumn ‘22, when we can reasonably expect the next results to appear. This means, in effect, that NAEP is AWOL for the pandemic and its school shutdowns, turning a blind eye to the learning losses that they’re causing. This also means that state testing in spring 2021 is now more important than ever—and that President Biden’s education secretary should resist all demands for another round of waivers from ESSA’s requirement that all students in grades three through eight should be assessed annually in reading and math. Absent such data, we’ll see both a collapse, perhaps permanently, of results-based school accountability and—more immediately—an appalling dearth of information about who is and isn’t learning what during these challenging times for K–12 education.

Children’s podcasting responded to the pandemic with episodes speaking to the moments children and families are experiencing, fortifying them with valuable information, and providing great storytelling, messages of empowerment, and off-screen learning. While adult podcast listening is down, with fewer people tuning in while commuting, children’s listening increased by 24 percent in March, and by August, one in four children were tuning in to podcasts. This playlist provides an overview of how children’s podcasters pivoted, responded, and engaged with their audiences in new and creative ways. We selected episodes that represent general trends, including growth of podcast programming into other children’s media, empowerment of student podcasting, expansion of topics for kids, and activism and civic engagement.

As protests against racial injustice spread to communities large and small in this year, many educators have been pushed to examine how systemic racism harms students. Some have publicly proclaimed the steps they will take to create anti-racist schools, including diversifying classroom and library bookshelves. That task may be easier than ever, thanks to six years of advocacy by the We Need Diverse Books campaignBuilding a classroom library that offers “windows, mirrors and sliding glass doors” to all children is more than a numbers game. It requires thoughtful curation of who is represented and how. Here are seven pitfalls to avoid when deciding what to leave in and out, accompanied by more than 50 title recommendations based on conversations in this piece to help kickstart the journey.