Sometimes a short video can lead to a lot of deeper thinking. Brené Brown led me there this morning when she shared her thoughts on the skill sets students will need in the future, skills rooted in curiosity, systems thinking, emotional awareness, and the courage to navigate uncertainty.
It allowed me to reflect on a question I come back to often:
How do we move our most vulnerable students in this direction, especially those who are behind in reading and math, learning English, and have never felt academic success?
The answer is not found in more compliance, quiet classrooms, or stacks of worksheets. It starts with giving students the tools to think in ways that build confidence from the inside out.
Speaking is the bridge to reading.
Reading is the bridge to writing.
Confidence grows across all three.
This is not limited to English or Social Studies. It applies directly to math, science, and every setting where students are making sense of complex ideas. When students, particularly those learning English or with significant gaps, are encouraged to notice what they see, ask questions, explain their reasoning, and talk through their confusion, the learning experience shifts.
For a student who has never felt successful in school, this matters. They do not need perfection; they need entry points. They need to feel safe enough to take a risk. They need structures that help them build grounded confidence rather than perform surface-level correctness.
Since growth is so rooted in speaking, my thoughts shift to the classrooms where I hear the least speaking, our math classrooms. Students in math are already doing a tremendous amount of reading every day: reading symbolic language, reading visuals like graphs and tables, reading directions, reading examples, and even reading the thinking of their peers. Yet so often they do all of that reading silently, without a space to process or make sense of it out loud.
How do we move toward math classrooms where students are encouraged to think out loud, test ideas, and make sense of problems with their peers? How do we shift from quiet compliance to active reasoning? For us, that next step means intentionally designing routines that let students talk through the math they are reading, represent their thinking, and build confidence step by step. Our most vulnerable learners deserve classrooms where their voices are part of the mathematics, not separate from it.
The next question becomes how we intentionally build speaking opportunities into our math classrooms, especially for students who need them most. That deserves its own focus. My next post will look closely at what speaking actually looks like in math and how it helps students close gaps and build real confidence.
It allowed me to reflect on a question I come back to often:
How do we move our most vulnerable students in this direction, especially those who are behind in reading and math, learning English, and have never felt academic success?
The answer is not found in more compliance, quiet classrooms, or stacks of worksheets. It starts with giving students the tools to think in ways that build confidence from the inside out.
Speaking is the bridge to reading.
Reading is the bridge to writing.
Confidence grows across all three.
This is not limited to English or Social Studies. It applies directly to math, science, and every setting where students are making sense of complex ideas. When students, particularly those learning English or with significant gaps, are encouraged to notice what they see, ask questions, explain their reasoning, and talk through their confusion, the learning experience shifts.
- Speaking helps them process the language of the task.
- Reading becomes accessible because they understand the ideas behind the words.
- Writing becomes a natural extension of their thinking.
For a student who has never felt successful in school, this matters. They do not need perfection; they need entry points. They need to feel safe enough to take a risk. They need structures that help them build grounded confidence rather than perform surface-level correctness.
Since growth is so rooted in speaking, my thoughts shift to the classrooms where I hear the least speaking, our math classrooms. Students in math are already doing a tremendous amount of reading every day: reading symbolic language, reading visuals like graphs and tables, reading directions, reading examples, and even reading the thinking of their peers. Yet so often they do all of that reading silently, without a space to process or make sense of it out loud.
How do we move toward math classrooms where students are encouraged to think out loud, test ideas, and make sense of problems with their peers? How do we shift from quiet compliance to active reasoning? For us, that next step means intentionally designing routines that let students talk through the math they are reading, represent their thinking, and build confidence step by step. Our most vulnerable learners deserve classrooms where their voices are part of the mathematics, not separate from it.
The next question becomes how we intentionally build speaking opportunities into our math classrooms, especially for students who need them most. That deserves its own focus. My next post will look closely at what speaking actually looks like in math and how it helps students close gaps and build real confidence.
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