We’ve made it to the sixth and final part of this blog series! For those of you who are still reading, thank you for coming on this journey with me. I’ve been reflecting on where I was when I started writing this series. I was relatively new to my school community (and state!) trying to understand how my knowledge and experience would best support the students, teachers and families I was now serving. I was also in the position to help rethink the structure of support at my school and contribute my expertise to the vision for literacy in our lower school. The process of organizing my thoughts to write these blog posts has inspired me to move differently in my school community. 

I am having more honest and forward thinking conversations with my colleagues, and get to hear what they feel is missing from our curricular approach or in their own practice. I’m pushing myself to actively offer more resources and training options. I’m delighted to dive into deeper, more collaborative conversations about individual students’ growth and needs. I am also leaning into opportunities to talk about the unique approach our leadership team is taking in our division around literacy: supporting exploration and knowledge building rather than rushing to adopt a new curriculum; trying out different approaches and materials based on teacher interest and availability, leading to lots of ideas trickling up from the bottom, rather than relying on top down mandates.  

I share all of this because I hope other teachers and administrators are finding ways to engage in this kind of collective and iterative process around literacy instruction. It’s hard to imagine this kind of engagement happening if we were all still spending time and energy on the battleground of the reading wars. Debating “The Science of Reading” would have been the wrong conversation. But we unlock so much possibility in having more meaningful, student-centered conversations. I recently saw teachers organize around aligning literacy practices between PreK-2nd grade. I had an exciting conversation with a first grade teacher about using assessment data to better understand her student as a reader and writer. We even planned literacy activities this student needs to help generalize phonics skills to their spelling and writing (in this case: structured dictation practice!). These are the essential conversations that move the work forward and help us know our students.

In this series, we’ve unpacked some of the deeper questions we should be asking: Who is my student as a reader and what do they need next? How do I know? What is missing from the teaching materials currently available to me if I am to meet my students’ needs? How do I know? How do I get what’s missing? I hope this exploration has resonated with many folks, provided inspiration or even validation, and decreased frustration over the spotlight being on the reading wars for far too long. We can reorient this conversation together. 

As I’ve said before, teaching, especially teaching students how to read, is complex. But these deeper, student-centered conversations and approaches to literacy are the complexity teachers are made for.    

Question for readers: How have your educational circumstances or perspectives changed since the beginning of this blog series? What new practices or conversations have you engaged in that help to build and affirm your ability to get the support and materials you need to meet your students’ literacy needs?

This is the sixth and final part of Emily’s six-part blog series on the Reading Wars. Click below to sign up for email alerts on any of Emily’s future blog posts.