I believe that some of our best innovators and thinkers are so traumatized by our system that they are underemployed or incarcerated. Our world needs the out-of-box thinkers to be unleashed. And I never want them to feel like they are being held back by not being able to record their thoughts through writing or learn something they need/want to learn through reading.

The hardest part of working with older students is that many adults have failed them in their life, and they don't trust you.

If not literacy, the science of learning, and classroom management, what ARE they teaching in colleges of ed? 🤔

Today at the hs: I’m having to revamp the curriculum for our younger class. They are only reading at a 4-5th grade level. They need more focus on decoding/fluency to overcome the decoding threshold for comprehension. The older class is full of students at 7-9th grade level. They need more explicit instruction and practice in language comprehension - morphology, syntax, pragmatics, macrostructure. This is done well in a writing framework. We touch on all of the strands in each class but instructional minutes are used accordingly. More phonics instruction isn’t always the answer for struggling readers.

shop.talk4writing.com/produc… free copy going if you like and retweet - ideal for ks2 national poetry day! I’ll choose in two weeks time the lucky winner. Thanks.

The learned helplessness of high school students is staggering.

No 1-on-1 intervention this week with Future Pilot and Star Athlete. The red tape to work with students is important for protecting them but has required some hoop-jumping. This is a real issue. I’m highly motivated so I’ve been jumping…but it shows me why some don’t.

Grading sentence composing work at the high school today. These activities delineate who in my class have difficulties with decoding and which ones are in my class due to difficulties with language. It is much harder for students with DLD to grasp syntax concepts such as subject, predicate, noun, adjective, etc.

Church class of 7 yos today: My husband: “Who could be in this picture?” Answer: “Mr. and Mrs. Lamb” I love kids. ❤️ We are getting to the end of memorizing the sign language and song to the books of the Old Testament. Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zachariah have been rough. It has reminded me that spending time memorizing should be used on important things and to build schema.

No one can convince me that the lack of quality materials isn’t the number one problem teachers face. I spent the summer creating and gathering the materials I’d need to make sure every minute counts in my hour with the hs students. But with a new student being dropped into our class almost every day this week and adjusting students accordingly, I fumbled with having enough copies, spent hours adjusting binders, and had to create new resources to accommodate additional needs of the new students. It would just be easier to print worksheets off of TpT and let them ‘discover’ their own learning. But I know best practices and for me it is about outcomes, not compliance. But I’m more organized now and ready to hit it again next week. And btw - the hit of chocolate was a fantastic reward for retrieval practice that led to an amazing discussion and collaborative write.

Yes! Being led! “All of the sudden” my friend who is literacy specialist got a grant for an after school literacy program for K-1 to teach paras the SoR. She started a non-profit last week and “happens to know” a philanthropist that wants to donate to projects like hers. I will help and will learn how to start a coaching program for the paras I will need in the high school!! It can almost feel overwhelming when things start opening up!

“Give it to me straight.” One of the students asked me today where some of his buddies in the class had gone. After taking data we adjusted the two classes. In fact, special ed has dropped 6 additional kids into our class, so we now have one practical English (4th-6th grade reading level) and one more for the 8th-28th percentile students (8-9th grade level). He saw right through me when I tried to say we were balancing out the classes. I did give it to him straight and he thanked me for letting him know he was in the lower class due to his reading ability. He also agreed to let me come into his study hall class for 1on1 reading and spelling help. He wants to be a pilot. I am adjusting my private clinic schedule so I can go volunteer another hour once a week at the school. I’ve got to help this student become a pilot. 💪

Looking through the binders today… I wish you could know this high school athlete with a million friends that is super charismatic and has a great sense of humor. This is why I do what I do. 😢

What I learned the first 2 weeks at the hs: These teens are jaded. They’ve heard it all before. Best way to quash any hope of gaining buy-in is to talk about what they will learn for too long! They need a taste of success, and it must be functional to their life.

I’m bullish on my high school classes this year! 💪 Thanks to amazing admin, we only have 15 or 16 in each class this time! Down from 27. 😱 And we also have an RTI coordinator from special ed coming in as a ‘hype man’. A formal football coach at the school who is dyslexic himself adds a great vibe to the class. 😎

I am SO excited for this lineup! Idaho's Literacy, Language and Dyslexia Summit eventbrite.com/e/idahos-lite…

My 15 year old making his own breakfast in a Saturday morning before heading out to do yard work. No fits. No eye rolls. He was the one that noticed he needed to mow again. Put in the work when they are young. The dividends of the investment of time, tears, and energy are substantial.

The Latino teen that was dropped in my class mid-last year with no English came up to me and asked if I’d make weekly assignments for him to learn English. Last year I just pumped out a few things that helped me learn Spanish and English. I did some conjugations, showed him basic verb tenses, vocab, etc. Are we really going to have a kid sit in school all day every day and not teach him English?! Glad he trusts me enough to actually advocate for himself. He knows I’ll show up for him. But there has to be a better way!

quantumleapslp.org/ Here is the website I made using Claude and Grok. 🙌 I learned to make a Jotform with an auto-response email. I created intake forms and ran through the gauntlet of learning how to do my onboarding processes using HIPAA-compliant resources. Anyone really can make a website!! Try it! And if you know anyone who wants a dyslexia/DLD diagnostic evaluation - send them my way!

This is my view every day pulling up to the hs. I don’t have to do staff meetings or PD. I don’t have to juggle district and building policies. I just get to show up to co-teach two classes during 2nd hour and go back to my SLP clinic. This makes me very grateful for the teachers that do have to juggle it all but also makes me realize how much of it really is excessive. How much more effective could teachers be if they had more time to be in the research rather than playing PD games?