Everyday choices and systems, both obvious and covert, hold truths about how we educate our children. Recognizing these truths allows us to course-correct and expand opportunities for students to receive grade-level, engaging, affirming, and meaningful instruction.
Author, speaker, and leader Lacey Robinson is a walking, talking testimony of this process. Her experience as a student, teacher, principal, and organization leader is woven together in her book Justice Seekers: Pursuing Equity in the Details of Teaching and Learning. Join me as Lacey, and I discuss the book and its purpose to help people see the power of our decisions in education and how they lend to the arc of justice or injustice in this country.
Key Takeaways
- Boldness is a main ingredient for the mindset required to produce grade-level, engaging, affirming, and meaningful instruction. Boldness doesn’t have to mean recklessness, so we can be bold and strategic in this pursuit.
- We don’t have to be dishonest about our students’ missing skills, we just have to use that honesty to explore ways to scaffold high-quality instruction and empathize by reflecting on the shortcomings we have overcome in our own lives.
- The science of reading needs to be seen as a package deal if we are to change the literacy rates in this country. We can’t afford to misrepresent what it takes to teach students how to read anymore.
- Grade-level, engaging, affirming, and meaningful instruction, or GLEAM can’t just be a catchphrase. Instead, it must remain a tool for us to catch the details in our teaching and learning in a way that promotes a just education. With folks like Lacey leading the charge, I look forward to this work and journey.