Today’s Literacy Headlines

A partnership between your public library and the public school district makes sense. Both organizations can save money by sharing space, personnel, and collections. Both can reach out to new patron groups through shared programming and marketing and leverage their partnership when it comes to advocacy and grant writing. What’s not to like? Before making the leap into a partnership, it’s important for decision makers to understand the sometimes complex issues at hand. In my 10-plus years as library director, the issues that require the most consideration are space, collection building, personnel, and programming and marketing.

As schools and learning have moved online, one of the biggest challenges has been providing special education. An estimated 14% of public school students receive such services in the U.S., and federal law requires schools to provide them. The U.S. Education Department has offered schools some flexibility, but with no road map or template for how to teach special needs students in this new world, teachers have been forced to innovate, adapting as they go along. “We’re seeing kids have services because people are being creative,” says Kelly Grillo, a special education coordinator at Cooperative School Services who oversees special education at two rural school districts in Indiana. She’s inspired by the ways teachers have embraced familiar tools, like Youtube, or apps like Remind. And it’s not all high technology. For students who don’t have access to the Internet, Grillo and her team — like many teachers across the country — are resorting to phone calls and text messages as well.

As every state now deals with schools that have been shuttered to slow the spread of the coronavirus, many district leaders have struggled to figure out how – or even whether – to provide virtual learning for the estimated 55.1 million kids out of school. Expanding e-learning districtwide raises thorny questions about digital equity and access, especially for students with disabilities, children living in poverty and those who are homeless. This has forced school leaders to ask, “If we can’t teach every student equitably, should we be teaching any at all?” In Washington state, districts have spent weeks weighing the dilemma of trying to teach all students, or no students, remotely. The answers have not been simple. But early lessons from the first center of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. could offer a preview of the ongoing questions that will consume the nation’s public schools for months, if not longer, as the temporary closures appear likely to last through the rest of this academic year and potentially into the next.

There are many school districts across the country that have been struggling to set up distance learning programs for students. Online offerings are sometimes nonexistent or spotty at best, and getting paper work packets to students is a near impossibility with much of the country’s public life shut down because of the covid-19 crisis. So where to turn? One possibility: your local public television and radio stations. Many of these stations across the country are partnering with school districts and state education departments to provide curriculum-based lessons and educational programming — all free and commercial free. And in some places, award-winning teachers are leading the lessons. According to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, its members reach almost 99 percent of the country, including areas where families have no Internet service.

I have spent much of my time as an educator concentrating on providing mirrors to my students so that they can see their identities reflected in the works that they read. Right now, I am also very consciously making sure I include Asian voices and perspectives to provide windows to non-Asian readers so that they develop the empathy necessary to recognize and combat xenophobia and racism. Luckily for all of us, there are so many good, complex, and contemporary books for all ages about the Asian experience. My 7-year-old son was reading Bao Phi’s A Different Pond. It’s the subtle and beautiful story of a father and son who go fishing together. As they sit quietly and wait for fish, the father talks about growing up in Vietnam, a different pond from where they are now in the United States. We so often live in our own worlds, unable to envision what it is like in others’ landscapes. This is a time for more understanding. Cultural literacy is about fluency in another culture, its customs and beliefs; it is understanding gained through literacy.

As American families shelter in place due to COVID-19, children with hearing loss may need additional help at home, according to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). The association offers parents guidance:, Here are two examples. Turn on closed captioning. Watching Frozen for the 100th time? Even if your child knows every line of the movie by heart, practicing reading along can help them keep up with new dialogue when you finally switch movies or shows. Most streaming services offer the option for closed captions or subtitles. Set aside time for regular face-to-face activities. These could take the form of a board game or meal together. During this time, make sure all screens are down and eyes are up, so everyone can fully capture what is being communicated.

As the coronavirus pandemic has forced the vast majority of schools across the country to close, educators are scrambling to find ways to keep reaching students during a crisis that is exacerbating existing inequities and increasing academic gaps. The twelve teachers interviewed for this story—from the Mississippi Delta to San Francisco, Texas, Arizona, subarctic Alaska, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—identified the four most urgent needs that must be addressed in order to help reduce rapidly increasing disparities in access to learning.

Starting April 14th, The Reading League (TRL) will host a daily 30-minute live educational television broadcast on WCNY, Central New York’s PBS affiliate. The program will run from 2:30 PM to 3:00 PM every weekday for the duration of WCNY’s “TV Classroom” broadcasting. The Reading League’s program, called “Letters and Language with Katie and Kelli,” will be hosted by two leading TRL coaches and longtime educators, Kelli Johnson and Katie Sojewicz. The program will primarily serve an elementary-level student audience and focus daily on phonological awareness, letter-sound knowledge, and the blending of words and phrases. Like all TRL programming, the televised lessons will be deeply rooted in evidence-based reading instruction.

One of the most frequent questions an author hears from students is how they started to write—and how young people can start, too. Maybe that’s why a number of middle grade and YA authors have created writing and journaling guides for kids and teens. With schools closed and millions of students learning from home, it’s a fertile time for young people to find their writing voice in the midst of chaos. These four standouts will help.

With the outbreak causing indefinite school closures across the country, children are having to figure out new ways of learning and playing together while living in isolation. Special correspondent Karla Murthy checked in on one second-grade class in New York City to get a glimpse of how their worlds have changed – and what remains the same. Classroom social-distancing doesn’t have to mean the end of social traditions.

As schools close in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, educators and parents alike are thinking about how the ways that kids spend the coming months will affect their school readiness in the fall—especially in the development of crucial reading skills. Children living in disadvantaged communities are particularly vulnerable to falling behind. Harvard education professor James Kim has some guidance to offer amid all this uncertainty. Kim is the key person behind READS for Summer Learning, a read-at-home literacy program designed to help students sharpen their reading skills when school is out of session. Research has shown that the program, which was developed for use by school districts, helped students in high-poverty elementary schools gain nearly 1.5 months of reading skills on average compared with non-participants. As the likelihood grows that classroom doors may be shuttered for months, Kim is providing all READS resources free online and is adapting them ​for use by parents and caregivers. Recently, he discussed why reading matters so much, what parents can do to encourage more of it, and how educators should be rethinking summer literacy programs.

In Dinuba, Calif., in the Central Valley, Dulce Meave cares for 14 children for 11 hours a day. Some arrive as early at 4 a.m. so their parents can go to work in nearby fields or packing houses. Most are Latinx, and about half speak Spanish at home. Yet Meave, a former preschool teacher who opened her home child care program two years ago, hasn’t had the opportunity to have much training in how to support young children under 6 learning two languages. And that’s a shame, because research shows that without specialized support, young dual language learners (DLLs) are likely to fall behind in school and lose their home language. But thanks to $5 million in new state funding, Meave is participating in a unique, locally developed training program to support teachers and caregivers of young DLLs and help ensure children are ready for kindergarten. Developed in Fresno, the Language Learning Project was recently awarded $1 million by California’s Department of Education to expand across the state, one of six funded projects.

With most of the world’s schools shut because of the coronavirus crisis, you can now find a lot of advice on the Internet about the best ways to carry out distance learning at home, where more than 1.5 billion students are now supposed to be getting their lessons. If you want a thorough rundown of what to do and not to do, read the following 19 strategies from renowned master educator Andy Hargreaves. Hargreaves, a research professor at Boston College and visiting professor at the University of Ottawa, has been working for decades to improve school effectiveness.

School-public library collaborations take many forms, with both sides committing to increase access and opportunities. Planning and implementing colocated libraries, where one site serves both an educational institution and the public, can be complex. But those who have established joint-use facilities say the shared libraries can greatly benefit both populations. Whether the partners are fully enmeshed in policy and procedure or have some autonomy, the goal is better access and fiscally responsible resource sharing.

When he was named National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature in January, author Jason Reynolds envisioned a crazy year with even more travel and visits to schools and juvenile detention facilities than usual. But, as with everything else, those plans have changed because of the novel coronavirus pandemic. Today, the Library of Congress announced a new way Reynolds would reach out to young people during this stay-at-home-time. On April 14, Reynolds will begin a biweekly video series called, “Write. Right. Rite.” to inspire young people to tell their own stories, as well as a monthly newsletter for parents and educators on “relevant topics of the day.” The program is the first initiative for his platform, “Grab the Mic: Tell Your Story,” and is a collaboration among Reynolds, the Library of Congress (LOC), the Children’s Book Council, and Every Child a Reader. The videos and newsletter will be found on the “Grab the Mic” page on the LOC website.

The timing for this year’s “Drop Everything and Read” Day couldn’t be better. With coronavirus quarantines leaving us at home and looking for things to do, the D.E.A.R. reading celebration day this Sunday could be a welcome distraction and possibly the start of a daily reading habit. D.E.A.R.’s mission is simple: to encourage families to take at least 30 minutes on D.E.A.R. Day to enjoy books together. Nashville Public Library officials say reading aloud to your preschool child is the single most important activity you can do to prepare them for school and that continuing to read to, and with, them is invaluable.

For the last 40 years, scientists across a number of disciplines have studied how our brains turn abstract symbols, or letters, into words — in short, how we learn to read. Different pieces of research, using cleverly designed experiments and high-tech brain imaging, have created a fairly clear picture of how the brain learns to wire itself to recognize words on the page, and have shown how the brains of high-flying readers wire themselves to make the process automatic. That’s led to a new idea in some education circles: that there’s a scientific way to teach reading — a systematic approach shaped by those brain-science discoveries that would help most students master literacy by the end of third grade. It’s a system that could be especially helpful to those with learning disabilities, like dyslexia. And the implications might be even more important as school districts and parents seek to teach kids at home in the wake of this month’s widespread school closures.

The night before a safer-at-home order was issued in her Wisconsin town, all Pernille Ripp could think about was getting to her books. When her middle school opened for a few minutes the next day, the seventh grade English teacher and creator of the Global Read-Aloud grabbed all the books she could from her classroom library, before the school closed for the foreseeable future. “I went to my classroom and grabbed a ton of books I could read aloud to my students online,” Ripp said. “I thought that this might be it for the rest of the school year.” Teachers across the nation are turning to digital read-alouds not only to keep student skills sharp, but to forge connections while they’re apart. Instead of gathering around the rug or a “lit circle” for a story like they used to do in class, some teachers are gathering students on the “virtual rug” of a Zoom conference call or Instagram Live to continue reading books to them. Online read-alouds allow teachers to provide students with a daily dose of literacy—and maybe even some laughs.

Nearly 30 disability rights and education advocacy organizations have launched EducatingAllLearners.org, a resource hub and online network designed to answer questions and provide insight about remote learning for special education students during the coronavirus crisis. Keeping services flowing for special education students has been difficult. Confusion over guidance from the U.S. Department of Education and fear of violating federal laws, such as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, has left some school districts struggling to get their online learning programs off the ground. Acknowledging that difficulty, the alliance aims to provide resources to ensure the millions of students with disabilities in the nation’s schools aren’t further marginalized. EducatingAllLearners.org users can create a free account to share ideas, contribute to discussions and access case studies and webinars. The site will also host virtual office hours with special education attorneys, parent advocates, and educators to field questions about legal rights and classroom practice.

In response to the spread of coronavirus, schools across the nation, including the University of Nevada, Reno, are transitioning to online learning for a period of time. This adjustment can be a challenge for some students; particularly those with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) or Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Cady Stanton has coached people with autism or ADHD for the past 15 years and has studied the role it plays in academic outcomes. People who have ADHD or who are autistic tend to have more executive function challenges, to the point where it can really interfere with their productivity, and ability to organize and set goals for themselves. They really do need external support. They also need a lot of understanding and encouragement from those around them, and to not have the challenges that they face minimized.

To be successful, remote instruction requires a lot of the same things any instruction does: clarity, review, checking for understanding, prompt feedback. But distance adds additional challenges, and these tips can help. But even in the best of circumstances, remote instruction can intensify challenges inherent in face-to-face settings. Research has shown that online learning doesn’t generally work as well as traditional instruction—and that students who are already struggling are likely to be harmed the most. Still, in recent weeks some experts and practicing teachers have offered pointers that can help remote instruction be as effective as possible.

John Daniel, superintendent of Cottonwood Public Schools in rural Oklahoma, talks about the challenges of making sure students don’t fall behind when many of his students and teachers don’t have access to computers, Wi Fi, or even reliable cell phone service. The one good thing that might come out of this experience, Daniel said, is a public commitment to ensuring digital access to all of Oklahoma and the rest of the country. You can learn more about Daniel and Cottonwood if you listen to Episode 2 of Season 2 of ExtraOrdinary Districts.