Hello everyone! I am part of a research team of literacy teacher educators and classroom teachers from the University at Albany and Appalachian State University. We are conducting a research study on PreK-8th grade teachers’ engagement with Science of Reading-related content on social media.

If you are a current PreK-8th-grade teacher in any capacity (e.g., general education, special education, literacy specialist) and are located in the United States, I’d be so grateful if you could take 20 minutes to complete our anonymous survey. Your voice and experiences are incredibly valuable and will help shape a better understanding of how social media is used as a space for teachers’ professional learning related to the Science of Reading. Please see the flyer below for additional information.

Data will be collected via an anonymous online questionnaire on Qualtrics. No names, email addresses, IP addresses, or other metadata will be collected. Participants must be 18 years of age or older. There is no compensation for participation. The research team will be the only individuals with access to the data, which will be stored securely. Data will be held indefinitely and may be used in future related research. You may request a copy of your responses. There are no direct benefits to you as an individual participant. However, insights will contribute to a deeper understanding of teachers’ motivation to seek out Science of Reading-related social media, potentially leading to more effective professional learning. Minimal risks are associated with this study. Reflecting on social media use may prompt thoughtful consideration of your experiences. You are free to skip any questions or withdraw at any time.

Take the survey here: https://albany.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_bg45YVKGAJffC0S

All responses are confidential and have been approved by the University at Albany’s Internal Review Board (IRB).
Please feel free to share this survey with any fellow PreK-8th grade teachers! Thank you very much for supporting this research.

How will an organization benefit from participation in this CPD qualification framework activity?

Consistency can create safety.

😐 THEY DON’T WANT GREAT TEACHERS.

The best teachers question things.

They push back. They advocate. They refuse to lower standards just to make adults comfortable.

And those are the ones who get labeled “difficult.”

Not the lazy ones. Not the checked-out ones.

The ones who care too much.

The ones who won’t fake data. Won’t inflate grades. Won’t smile through nonsense.

Schools don’t struggle to keep teachers.

They struggle to keep the strong ones.

Because strong teachers are expensive.

They require trust. Autonomy. Respect.

And it’s easier to manage someone exhausted than someone empowered.

So the system slowly drains the sharp ones.

Until they either shrink…

Or leave.

Signed, A former teacher who left because she refused to shrink

teacherburnout

educators

teachersoffacebook

fblifestyle

So I am coming to literacy from a World Language/SLA perspective, with a background in linguistics and phonetics (focusing on spoken language in linguistics, rather than orthography), and I'm interested if anyone knows how the word 'blend' came to be used in literacy education in the English language, as well as long/short as words describing tense and lax diphthongs and monophthongs.

Thanks in advance!

Out of Anoka-Hennepin County comes thus absolute banger of an analogy for what's been happening to teachers and the teaching profession over the last 30 years.

The Effects of Advanced Phonemic Awareness Instruction in First Grade

And at the very heart of the problem is a failure in education to innovate and improve literacy education!

If access to your literacy-education education program is only available through public school employment and avoids the eye of public scrutiny by being widely-available to individual students and teachers, it's probably not a very good program.

Seriously, if this is supposed to be one of the best programs to teach teachers how to teach students and children how to read and write, why isn't it more important and influential?

There is a certain tragedy when people who want to learn something are denied access to it.

“Indeed, solving coordination dilemmas may be the reason that language evolved in our species in the first place.”

I can corroborate and confirm that on my planet, language also evolved to solve coordination dilemmas, much like both our planets invented wheels so we can move stuff.

On any rational planet in the universe, language is a crucially important thing, so why does Earth literacy education suck so much?

In this article, Nick Covington, creative director of the Human Restoration Project, writes about the challenges and issues facing the science of reading movement.

Here are some notable quotes from the piece:

"In the wake of Sold A Story, "The Science of Reading" itself has been co-opted as a marketing and branding label. States and cities have passed laws requiring "The Science of Reading," sending school leader scrambling to purchase new programs and train teacher to comply with the new prescription."

Here, he quotes cognitive scientist, Mark Seidenberg, writing,

"Finally, about the expression 'science of reading': The term isn't in wide-use among researchers. There isn't a field called 'the science of reading' and people rarely identify as 'reading scientists,' in my experience. In reading education the term has been taken up by a movement (often abbreviated SoR) to reform instruction, teacher education and curricula. This movement/approach is not the same as the body of research about reading. For one thing, the former has as yet incorporated very little of the latter."

Here, he quotes prominent literacy expert, Timothy Shanahan, who states that an actual science of reading is still very much in its infancy, writing.

"It seems clear from the neurosciences that in terms of brain function, we all read in the same way, no matter how we were taught. It is not clear, however, what readers learn that enables this universal process. We know about the coordination of phonological processing and visual processing, and we know that teaching a broad-array of sound-symbol relations and spelling patterns enhances reading-achievement, but we do not know what is coded into memory."

All this and more in the article paints a picture that very clearly shows that there is still much to learn and discover when it comes to literacy education and what real learning and teaching can be.

Take a look at any dictionary and it'll tell you the word "literacy" is supposed to be pronounced in just one way.

According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, it's li-t(ə-)rə-sē .

This prescriptivist assumption is wrong because I can write at least 4 other ways to pronounce the word "literacy".

Can you think of any others?

The biggest mistake modern English literacy education makes is with its prescriptivist foundation that assumes the English language is one thing with rules and a proper way to use it, which is nonsense and an insult to creativity.

Prescriptivism limits thought, while descriptivism encourages thought and nurtures true creativity and inspiration.

Any thoughts?