Liz Stepan

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.

@rodjnaquin @bsparks226 And following Faith has taught me the importance of grade level text. I went with a lower level book for our study this year and really regretted it. It was supposed to increase engagement but it didn’t push them higher in their academic language and thinking.

I'm inspired by teacher Faith Howard who transformed fluency drills into meaningful learning. Instead of generic practice passages, she uses interesting articles connected to class novels. Students read the same article all week with different daily activities: tackling big words, exploring word meanings, writing sentences, discussing ideas, and practicing spelling. Her struggling high school readers now build knowledge and skills—not just reading speed. scienceofreadingclassroom.substack.com/p/i-was-doing-…

@JayKloppenberg I was thinking of including some reading material about neuro plasticity - as nonfiction. Is that something that can be explicitly taught in your opinion?

I think what people on both sides of these debates often fail to recognize is that some topics (a) are really important, and yet (b) cannot be effectively taught directly. Mental health is one of these, as is growth mindset, as is grit, as are many other things. We don't build them by talking about them. You can put a name to it briefly if you want, but that isn't what works. You do the work in a way designed to build them. And you can build them. Thoughtful parents, coaches, and teachers have been doing that for centuries. That's why I do not find any contradiction in findings like, for example, "growth mindsets are really important" and "interventions to teach growth mindset are ineffective." I'd call this a "lesson behind the lesson" thing, and argue it needs to remain there to be effective. Tldr I agree with your students.

Today at the hs: It was a gut-check alongside a lightbulb moment. 💡 In expressive language intervention, the least complex task is a personal retell. I thought I was lowering the cognitive load of learning writing structure for my students by creating prompts for their writing at the language equivalent of personal retells. Made logical sense... During discussion today, one student remarked that the worst part about writing is that all teachers force them to write about personal topics "like goals and stuff". It coincided with other comments I've heard from youth about being tired of mental health discussions. We are inadvertently lowering complexity of language by always trying to make content "relevant". It really became obvious - students are being repeatedly asked to write at the level of personal retells when their oral language capacity is far greater. I need to raise the level of language complexity in my content and prompts. @SoLInTheWild and others keep posting about this. But it became crystal clear to me today. I'd take any pointers on creating writing prompts to increase the level of academic language in responses!

@smarterparrot I'm dying laughing! That is hilarious! My goodness - I didn't realize this was a thing and it is another argument of having school-wide coherence on curriculum.

One of the funnier moments in my years of public was the day my neighbor’s 8th grade son, assigned yet another personal narrative, told his mom “I’m running out of memories”

@tetheredtoed1 And when they are so far behind, it is even more tempting to just keep passing them along.

@LizStepan I made the huge mistake recently of being honest with a middle school principal about this exact thing — sending them to HS thinking they can come and go as they please, that’s it’s always snack time like they are toddlers, that sitting on phones in class is okay

This stuff makes the schools’ adults feel better, they get to avoid seeing the immeasurable harm of not teaching kids until they’ve left the building. It’s cancerous to secondary school culture. If you care about literacy and numeracy…

@ModernApocrypha Same! I learn so much and really refine my practice with all the ppl who take time to respond and clarify!! It is like talking with AI but with real people that have real experience!

@LizStepan Glad to be useful in some small way. Also glad to discuss a bit about this. Thank you for your time.

@ModernApocrypha Thank you for the distinction. That helped me clarify my thoughts on that.

@LizStepan That's a useful method of teaching, but not really a good one for open/genuine discussion, for sure. 🙂

@socraticexp We had to tease out the “quality of thoughts” quote by Marcus Aurelius today. It took quite a bit of heavy lifting for these high schoolers to comprehend the simple quote. I have a lot of work to do.

If your child is in a Socratic seminar where students are not taking ideas seriously, nothing real is happening. Most Socratic Seminars in schools are just bull sessions. Not because the method is flawed. Because schools skip three prerequisites that actually matter. The first is textual analysis. If students cannot understand complex sentences and ideas, they will not engage with philosophy. The whole exercise collapses. The second is group dynamics. If students are subtly shaming, intimidating, or insulting each other, real dialogue will not happen. We spend time coaching students in mutual respect and responsibility. This shift alone dramatically increases the consistency of our work. The third is taking ideas seriously. This is the hardest one. Most students in American schools are just passively going through the motions. They do not regard themselves as responsible moral agents with an obligation to seek the truth. When these three things are in place, dialogue transforms from performance art into the real thing. Students learn to bring evidence. To acknowledge inconsistencies. To pursue coherence as a moral obligation. Without these three, you have people talking in a circle. With them, you have minds learning to think.

@DonKAriel 🤪

Cannot be planned- but apparently totally readable 🤣

@aniTSchweizer This would be especially good for my autists - taking on another’s perspective and altering point of view! Thank you!

@LizStepan Also something that prompts creativity and imagination. Give basic prompts where they are the character in the story. For ex., you and another person are in danger, how do you get out. Pick a person (friend, celebrity), pick the danger (lost, aliens), make it like a movie script.

@aniTSchweizer This is also brilliant. And it can involve a lot of description which they need as well! Noted. Thank you!

@LizStepan You have a lot of good suggestions here. Along with technical writing I would add writing instructions on how to do something. Maybe like a recipe, how to navigate to a place, how to do a specific task. This might not develop writing so much as thinking thru steps in order.

@ModernApocrypha I see that discussion is a bunch of leading questions to get to a set outcome rather than a true discovery of ideas and thoughts. I catch myself doing this and change course!

@LizStepan Teaching them that things "aren't OK topics" is rarely intentional, but something about the systems adults use to govern life doesn't connect well with kids.

@PhonicsMom Will do! I played bingo with them on the first week! I need to do another round for retrieval practice!

I would pick words with easy roots, start with easy part, then complex. I picked the most common Greek and Latin roots for my bingo game, you could build words from there or other similar sources: thephonicspage.org/download/greek… Try both that and tier two words, perhaps a mix of both, some of the tier 2 words may have good roots. They likely need the tier 2 words but higher level words may be more motivational once learned. Try a bit of everything on different days and see what works!!

@Spike_Mordant And I think that is actually teaching them social norms as well - discuss opinions but draw a boundary with personal info.

@LizStepan As a kid, I hated writing about personal stuff. I valued my privacy too much for that. I gravitated towards current events, politics, and similar topics where I could express opinions without bringing up my personal life at all.

There are a couple of athletes. What they wish they could change about their lives is brilliant. We just had a discussion about seating charts. Haha. Fully agreed about acceptable topics! The look on their faces when I take their comments seriously has kind of shocked me - they are not used to it!

@LizStepan Fair What are they doing in their free time? Sports? What games are they playing? What has disrupted their lives lately? What do they wish they could change about their lives? Point is: They've been taught that the things they *actually* think about aren't acceptable topics.

@DonKAriel That is what I remind myself of every day…no matter the reading outcomes, any one on one care is neuro protective.

@LizStepan That's new. Thanks!

@ModernApocrypha Very interesting…ok! These students will honestly need some prodding on topics. They will all say that they don’t have anything interesting they’ve thought about…

@LizStepan "Give me a paragraph about something that you've found interesting lately." This isn't about lower or higher complexity, IMO. It's about what they're focusing on. Ask them to write about something they care about. You'll get enthusiasm. You may get more than you ask for.

@DonKAriel The Rabbit Effect

@LizStepan Remember- it is you trying different things every day that is increasing interest in the biggest most steady way. It is you they will remember, not any task.

@Eliana_Goldin @periwinkle369 Yes!

@LizStepan @periwinkle369 Do you guys have an ipad? I might have a solution for you

My 7th grader is testing in the 35th percentile in math and in some areas is even testing at the level of a 4th grader. She thought there was something wrong with her. Last week I told her that she's not stupid and that her low scores are only because she was placed in a bad system that didn't have her best interest at heart. I told her that if she worked hard, trusted her own intelligence, and worked through the gaps in her knowledge, she could easily be scoring in the 85th percentile. We gave her our app, the Math Academy curriculum, and a tutor, and now she's run wild. She works her butt off now. Every single day, without a doubt, she does more than twice the recommended amount of math that we assigned her in our app. She's working through hard problems, asking our AI for help when she's unsure about something, and making exponential progress. She isn't just proving the standardized testing wrong. She's proving her own worst thoughts about herself wrong. Kids need someone to believe in them and they need the infrastructure to turn that belief into action. That's what good educators should do, and that's what we're doing with Recess. Sounds cliche, but I feel like we're changing the world, one kid at a time.

@anenglishteachr Very interesting! Yes, I suggested a mental health activity to a youth council and they shut me down so fast. They said they talk about it almost daily. Crazy.

@LizStepan I found the same to be true about race. My school is 90+% black kids and students tell me all the time how they want to read/write about things other than their race!