The patterns associated with poverty in America have created a new bias in the school setting. It is difficult for teachers to see a Black student and not subconsciously associate them with the behaviors commonly exhibited by low socioeconomic students, and research confirms this.

How can educators maintain a certain sense of well-being at the start of the new year given legitimate fears about health and safety, educational gaps, and a social and emotional disconnect from students? How do we put 2020 in the past (where it belongs) and look to a happier, healthier 2021?

Results of the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) are in, and the picture is not pretty when it comes to fourth grade reading scores.

Studies that emphasize both classroom instruction and supplemental intervention programs have found that all but two percent to five percent of students can learn basic reading skills in first grade, even in populations where the incidence of poor reading is very high.

Social-Emotional Learning has become a hot topic for education audiences from practitioners to researchers, and even curriculum developers. However, while the social-emotional domain is certainly a critical component of human learning and development, I push the educational and scientific communities to remove the silos and begin to grapple with the inextricable ties between social-emotional learning and other aspects of learning and skill development, particularly in the language and literacy domain.

The Structured Literacy approach has been found to be particularly effective with learners with dyslexia because it focuses on decoding skills, which are critical components of finding success in reading. By emphasizing spelling patterns (instead of specific words), I can lead my students toward using decoding as a strategy, rather than them trying to memorize words by their appearance. It’s true—“Memorization is Not Understanding.”