James retweetledi
James
3K posts
@madison_tayt In cases of severe illnesses, we have programs like “home and hospital” where a teacher will come to a child’s home/hospital before/affer school to provide them their instruction and give them work to do throughout the day.
Public schools go so far to meet every kids needs.
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if this were a half way functional society we’d make it impossible for anyone to homeschool their kids
(except in cases of severe illness and then it would still be heavily monitored by the government)
Maryam@hell_line0
The fact that Americans can just not send their kids to school and call it that “homeschooling” is crazy to me.
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@S_Oberle Words of aspiration and inspiration dont land if the leader giving it isn’t serious about getting the work done academically and behaviorally.
Just like in my classroom, it is not enough for me to tell my students that I believe in them, they need to believe me when I say it.
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I find inspirational quotes and talks demeaning & void of substance.
Do we really think teaching can be encapsulated by how inspired someone feels in the moment?
Can our work be reduced to pep talks rather than knowledge and professionalism?
= remain unserious & under-respected
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It’s wild but I’m often told that learning can’t be cumulative and build on itself because kids are absent so much and transfer schools frequently. But nobody is being held back, I’m also told.
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@lilkittiebeans @madisontayt_ You must have never met a front desk staff member at a public school.
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@JAMESch1v27 @madisontayt_ Because front desk workers are no longer trusted members of our community and instead will do anything to not perform any duties because it means less work for them, which is all they care about since they share no values with us.
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anyone who thinks kids need phones in school for “emergencies” has soup for brains.
like think that through for just a little longer.
BURN IT ALL 4 SUE STORM ᗢ | WNCel⚔️@haniimhome
Just ban them from classrooms. If I was a parent, I would need my child to have a phone for emergencies
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Investing in our children, their present and their future, is the greatest investment we can make.
Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani@NYCMayor
Spent Saturday with President Obama and New York's Cutest — turns out my first name is Mayor and I need to be doing more squats. Here’s to building a City where families can thrive and every classroom is full of this much joy.
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James retweetledi
Orange production in Florida has collapsed over 95% in less than 25 years. 100% of trees are now infected with a disease officially deemed “incurable.”
Who killed the Florida orange? My investigation, in @slate, into the lost empire of the old citrus state.
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James retweetledi
I wonder if we are currently at a crossroads with regard to curriculum publishing in our country. Maybe it's David's time vs Goliath. Here are my reading comprehension growth scores for the years 2022-2025 based on iReady. For context, my students never completed iReady lessons. They were instructed using the following.
Reading Reconsidered Novel units
Core Knowledge Texts for Science & Social Studies
Word Mapping Project curriculum (2025) - focus is vocabulary, spelling, and morphology.
I've kept things simple. For the ELA block, I use RR novel units and the WMP curriculum. As you can see I'm gettng consistently high results.
Furthermore, when you factor in cost it is that much more remarkable. Reading Reconsidered & Word Mapping Project curriculum are quite reasonable compared to Goliath's pricing. Maybe schools and districts need to begin looking at David and not Goliath.
Typical yearly iReady growth is 100%.
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@AbbyTeachesDSM Something I say to my students is “I refuse to see you be careless because I care about you a whole lot.”
Sweating the small stuff keeps away the big stuff.
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One of the teachers I did a practicum with WAYYYYY back in the day said pushing in chairs was like returning shopping carts. It has stuck with me for almost 25 years.
She wasn’t wrong.
Bill Davidson@billdavidsoniii
As a teacher, I emphasized pushing in chairs. I’m not sure why but holding kids accountable for doing this seemed to do much more than simply keeping an orderly workspace. It reinforced a classroom culture of independence and responsibility.
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James retweetledi
Education research is weak and sloppy. Why? We all quickly condemned Units of Study, and Fountas and Pinnell, but what is happening in math is even worse. open.substack.com/pub/theargumen…
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@AbbyTeachesDSM Many are running ahead not noticing the crowd is way behind on the horizon
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James retweetledi
There are still places where the "science of reading" conversation has barely started, and I'm worried that we are talking about "over-teaching" phonics when we're still under-teaching in many classrooms.
How about, "what's optimal and are we doing too much or too little?"
Chad Aldeman@ChadAldeman
Are kids spending too much time on phonics? I dunno, but I'd sure like to see some data! In the meantime, the best evidence suggests kids need a lot more practice with fluency, and that decoding goes far beyond the basics (e.g. how "cat" becomes "education").
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James retweetledi
I taught the word pair foreign & domestic today. Students linked the words immigrate and import with the word foreign. Students wrote phrases like domestic flight and domestic violence as well. Discussed domestic vs international flights. This isn't a fun phrase to discuss, but students hear about it on tv. From a language standpoint it is beneficial to discuss the differences in how the word domestic is used in the phrases domestic flight vs domestic violence. First day back from break and we get right back to nerding out on words.
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James retweetledi
Marva Collins is proof that access to high quality, rich texts depends on us rather than the students.
That’s what ‘equity’ actually looks like in practice.
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James retweetledi
It's official. The Word Mapping Project website is up, and the curriculum is now available for purchase. A big thank you to everyone who supported me during this process. Let's do right by kids.
wordmappingproject.com
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The "you're teaching too much of X (i.e. phonics)" and "we're over-scaffolding in Y (i.e. math)" falls apart when most of this stuff is taught in heterogeneous groups. It often comes down to the fact that a certain number of students should not be in that instructional group!
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James retweetledi
When students are anxious/depressed, one method of remediation might be TEACHING THEM TO DO SCHOOL BETTER. Just got this message from a mental health professional.
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James retweetledi
Master the basics until they're unconscious. You can't play strategy if you're still thinking about how to move the pieces.
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James retweetledi
I recently had the opportunity to visit @WashingtonLatin - "classical education for a modern world" - and was inspired to see what is possible when a school has a clear vision. There are schools where this work is happening outside the political right (as the author notes) (1/7)
Jacobin@jacobin
Students deserve to read a gripping novel in its entirety, not because it will help them get into college but because good stories can spark joy and reflection. To defend public education, we must articulate a bigger vision of what school is for: jacobin.com/2026/04/right-…
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