“My concern about teaching ELA is there is only 90 minutes in an elementary school day, and there is never time for all the components.  Admin doesn’t seem to care about this or do anything about it. I love guided reading but there’s also whole group,  read aloud, independent reading, phonics, grammar. This has always been a quandary for me. What would you focus on most?“

Anonymous, Grade 2, South Carolina

Kids.

In the clutter and cluster that is content, find and focus on kids. All the things you listed are important–thus, the quandary.  At the middle and high-school levels, we too struggle with all that we must teach in a hurried and harried existence, where (in my experience) writing gets the short-straw draw, for it is the hardest to teach, and it takes the longest to learn. In short, at all levels and in all classrooms, there’s too much content and too little time. And if we linger too long on this reality, we quickly and sometimes deeply spiral into a state of anxiety and apathy. “It’s too hard, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

We can’t live here. It’s not good for us. And it’s not good for our kids. 

So, what do we do?

Trust our instincts, and do the most and best we can with providing meaningful literacy experiences for kids that nurture, not kill, a love for learning literacy (in the very short time we have).

Too simple? Maybe. 

Maybe it has to be.

~sy