Introducing 'The Latest in Literacy,' a Marshall Memo for literacy (and more)
Can a Substack newsletter save us from the death of Literacy Twitter? Let's find out.
Welcome! Let’s get right to it.
On Center Stage
Nick Kristof brought the Southern Surge story to the New York Times. His viral column featured the policies fueling reading and math gains, plus a spotlight on attendance.
In the National Review, Mary Katharine Ham is big worried about the disappearance of books from classrooms. She also sees the Southern Surge as a compelling corrective.
Rahm Emanuel is trying to pave a path to the White House by preaching Southern Surge replication on repeat.
Congress held hearings on the Science of Reading (!!). They called for National Reading Panel, The Sequel, and I’m here for it.
The Literacy Zeitgeist
Chris Such has entered the Substack chat. It’s as refreshing as you’d expect to see him writing without Twitter character limits. His debut explores the culprit in fluency gaps.
Kristen McQuillan is also Substacking. What’s love got to do with books?, she asks in her Valentine’s debut.
Linguistic phonics is a heckuva hot topic right now. A recent paper1 is fueling interest. Recently, Donna Hejtmanek hosted a pair of webinars with educators who’ve made the shift. SoR Classroom teachers have shared videos of their routines and explained why linguistic phonics connects better for their multilingual learners. The question people are asking: Can LP offer a more efficient and/or book-rich path to learning the code? The question I’m asking: Is the success about Linguistic Phonics specifically, or is it really about breaking up with the complexity and slow pace of OG-style approaches? Also, why is there no research comparing the approaches head-to-head??
Writing on writing: How can curriculum support writing instruction, and why is everyone using the same excellent supplements? The Curriculum Insight Project explains all.
Speaking of writing supplements… Chad Aldeman published an interview with The Writing Revolution team, in which they describe their new AI tool, Ask Judy.
Speaking of AI… New York City educators have pioneered a compelling way to use AI to empower better writing feedback in-the-moment, while also helping teachers to target classroom support.
Content areas are trending: Ben Zulauf is talking about content-starved school schedules. Olivia Mullins is talking oral language development in science lessons, and Ms. Sam has a whole series on building Tier 2 words into science instruction.
EduChatter
Carl Hendrick’s latest superb piece on curriculum design was all over feeds for a reason. “If there is a central conundrum in instructional design, it is this: firstly, how to disassemble a domain of knowledge into teachable parts without destroying what made it a domain in the first place.”
The disconnect between school enrollment (declining) and staffing (increasing) remains topical. Chad Aldeman captured last year’s dichotomy: “public schools added 118,000 employees last year even as they served 135,000 fewer students.” Edunomics launched a tool for exploring district-level staffing changes.
A loud Amen Choir is shouting out Luke Morin’s story, just published by Holly Korbey: “I was the highest-performing teacher in Colorado. No one noticed.”
Coming Attractions
Next Wednesday at 7pm, Marnie Ginsberg and I will be discussing the reasons Everyone’s Sweating State Curriculum Lists. (Don’t get me started on this… or do!) Join us.
Beyond the Edusphere
Studies show that resistance training is good for your mental health. Go lift something heavy this weekend!
And Now, a Word About This Newsletter…
I’ve been thinking about the need for a Marshall Memo for Literacy since I entered my Substack Era, and y’all, it’s time.
Technically, this is also my Valentine’s Day Love Note to the Artists Formerly Fueling Literacy Twitter. ❤️❤️❤️
Remember EduTwitter? It was pretty awesome. All that student work and open discussion about instruction, posted by sharp educators. Also, it was easily the best place to spot breaking news and must-read articles. We’ve lost that, and I’ve been grieving it lately.
(I’m still posting in Twitter [and calling it Twitter], Because Stubbornness, and politicians and journalists are still hanging out, so it’s important to keep the literacy discourse going, IMHO. I agree with Jerusalem Demsas on the case for remaining in Twitter. Still, it’s grim.)
No platform is naturally-suited to replacing EduTwitter. The algorithms in FB and Insta are too screwy to be reliable. Insta’s also too focused on bite-size takes, rather than substance and discussion. Blue Sky is all-politics, mirroring Twitter’s evolution. Substack is the Least Worst option, in spite of its own quirky algorithm.
This post is an experiment in trying to revive The Spirit of Literacy Twitter via Substack. Can collections like this one make it easier to find literacy discourse? Almost certainly Yes.
Do I have the capacity to maintain this? 😬 Open question. I’m not ready to commit to frequency for this newsletter, but I’ll see what I can do.
You can help!
If this effort gets a boost from crowdsourcing, I’ll be able to sustain it. So, Help a Citizen Journalist Out. The best way to nominate a story for this digest is to fill out this form. Posting in social media and tagging me is also OK (although far less efficient).
Because this digest is new, I’ll periodically feature articles from the last few years which deserve renewed attention. You’re invited to nominate older knocked-your-socks-off content, too.
Thanks for reading and keeping literacy in the zeitgeist.
Reexamining Foundational Literacy Instruction in the United States: A Case for Linguistic Phonics” was originally published by Jennifer Newman and Svetlana Cvetkovic in The Educational Therapist, Volume 46, Number 2. Copyright 2025 by the Association of Educational Therapists. https://www.aetonline.org/ Permission granted to be shared by the School Yourself Substack.
As a teacher deeply interested in SoR and evidence-based learning, I find the greatest challenge is keeping up with the rapidly shifting landscape of literacy research. It seems to me that we are now in the era of "Phonics Wars". How much phonics? What kind of phonics programs? What approach is most successful?
We have the O-G group, like Wilson, Barton, UFLI, and 95%. Pros for this group is the systematic and explicit teaching that spirals phonics skills, with the early lessons focusing on the most stable vowel and consonant spelling patterns, and it can be easy for teachers to learn because lessons are step by step. Cons are that it doesn't work with all struggling learners, can get bogged down in making a student do multiple repeats of a lesson, and doesn't include much morphological or etymological instruction for students or teachers.
Then we have linguistic phonics that focuses on sounds first. Pros for this group is the streamlined approach to multiple spellings of a sound, begins with how students in different regions pronounce something, so it's not reliant on a single pronunciation, and emphasis on real text application rather than decodables. Cons are that learning all variations at once can lead to cognitive overload for struggling students. I've found that they have great difficulty applying what they learn to spelling.
Syllabication goes with pronunciation ra * bbit, but rab * bit signals that the first <a> is short and helps in pronunciation and in understanding why consonants are doubled. I watched an EBLI video where the instructor showed how to help students pronounce multi-syllabic words by blending each piece and putting the pieces together. However, she already had the word divided into syllables and if a phoneme was mispronounced, such as saying a short <o> when it should be a long <o>, she would tell them the sound to say. There was no explanation of why the word was divided that way or why the pronunciation should be a long vowel vs. a short vowel. Lastly, not much emphasis in morphology or etymology.
Finally, we have Structured Word Inquiry with a tight focus on morphology and etymology. Pros are that it teachers the meaning and structure of English words, that spelling and meaning tends to be consistent while pronunciations may change, and that English is predictable when meaning and history of word development is understood. I think it also provides the greatest growth in vocabulary. Cons are that it is very word based, with no clear explanation of how to apply it to connected text. Because the proponents insist on inquiry, it will, in my opinion, never be adopted by schools because you can't have 3 or 4 first grade classes learning different things, then getting mixed into 3 or 4 second grade classes who may or may not repeat what they learned in first grade. Also, the proponents sometimes, in my opinion, end up in the weeds trying to distinguish every single prefix, base, and suffix. It's also a lot to expect teachers to know all of the bound Greek and Latin bases without some clear curricula.
These pros and cons are just off the top of my head. I've been learning and using all of these systems for several years now. I use aspects of each one when teaching how English spelling and pronunciation works. I hope that at some point research will show how these approaches can be melded together into a cohesive program that includes all aspects of literacy, not just decoding and encoding.
Valiant mission!! Praying for endurance.