This was really interesting, and kudos to "Jason Smith" for undertaking this work. I do find it dismaying, though, that he felt he needed anonymity to speak freely. I'm not blaming him, but while it's great to know about the work being done at this school somewhere in the Midwest, it would be even better to know its name so that interested people could find out more and perhaps even visit the school to see a science-informed teaching approach in action.
I'd also love to know what elementary curriculum the school is using. We're told that they used to use a "reading workshop/balanced literacy/writing workshop" approach, which didn't work well, but we're not told what replaced it. From what I've seen, a content-rich curriculum is not a guarantee that instruction will align with the principles of cognitive science, but you do need that kind of curriculum in order to then apply the principles. And it generally doesn't work well to rely on teachers to supply the content themselves.
Enjoyed the interview. Props to "JS." This was interesting: "Have others in your district taken notice of your success and what you’re doing?" / No.
Wild guess: District people noticed. They didn't like those outlier results. The Jason Smith story is the Jaime Escalante story is the Rafe Esquith story is the Lorraine Monroe story. All of them had to build community *outside* their districts.
This was really interesting, and kudos to "Jason Smith" for undertaking this work. I do find it dismaying, though, that he felt he needed anonymity to speak freely. I'm not blaming him, but while it's great to know about the work being done at this school somewhere in the Midwest, it would be even better to know its name so that interested people could find out more and perhaps even visit the school to see a science-informed teaching approach in action.
I'd also love to know what elementary curriculum the school is using. We're told that they used to use a "reading workshop/balanced literacy/writing workshop" approach, which didn't work well, but we're not told what replaced it. From what I've seen, a content-rich curriculum is not a guarantee that instruction will align with the principles of cognitive science, but you do need that kind of curriculum in order to then apply the principles. And it generally doesn't work well to rely on teachers to supply the content themselves.
Enjoyed the interview. Props to "JS." This was interesting: "Have others in your district taken notice of your success and what you’re doing?" / No.
Wild guess: District people noticed. They didn't like those outlier results. The Jason Smith story is the Jaime Escalante story is the Rafe Esquith story is the Lorraine Monroe story. All of them had to build community *outside* their districts.