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Karen Vaites Profile picture
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Feb 7 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
.@DrLeanaWen, @JamesSurowiecki, and the New Jersey Education Association are all chill about ending mask mandates in schools.

Can we please stick a fork in school mask policies?

They’re done.
NJEA statement:

njea.org/njea-statement…
In other news, @NPR is covering the miracle of natural immunity, now that “better data” allows it…
npr.org/sections/goats…

And @tedlieu is preaching it.

If you need me, I’ll be getting treatment for my Monday whiplash.
Thoughts and prayers for our necks.

#Whiplash

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More from @karenvaites

Karen Vaites Profile picture
Feb 8
Lots of smart education voices are talking about this tweet.

It’s illustrative of a pretty major issue in K–12 education: many educators don’t believe that learning facts matters.

The attitude:

“Kids can just Google it.”

Just one problem: this conflicts w/ key research.
Background knowledge is essential to critical thinking.

I highly recommend this piece by @jillbarshay, explaining how & why.

It’s intuitive: You have to hold something in your head to think critically about it.

kqed.org/mindshift/5447…
Background knowledge is also key to reading comprehension.

It’s pretty easy to grasp this one, too:

Can you understand this passage? Would you succeed in answering comprehension questions about it?

The answer is no… unless you understand the game of cricket.
Read 6 tweets
Karen Vaites Profile picture
Feb 6
I was only able to catch part of @DrSarahLupo's session at #LiteracyMatters, but I was delighted to see that she was speaking about the importance of knowledge-building curriculum!

Definitely gonna catch this recording.

#KnowledgeMatters
Knowledge-building curriculum isn't just about a healthy dose of nonfiction!

There is SO much more to the intentional design.

I talked about this in my session, too. @DrSarahLupo went into greater detail.
We aren't just building new knowledge, we are thoughtful about activating prior knowledge...

#KnowledgeMatters
#LiteracyMatters
Read 4 tweets
Karen Vaites Profile picture
Feb 6
The End of the Pandemic May Tear Us Apart

A very astute take from @M_B_Petersen.

nytimes.com/2022/02/04/opi…
“As we tentatively approach the end of the crisis period of the pandemic, leaders need to help people put risk into perspective.”

Failure to do so will exacerbate societal divisions.
“When opinions become identities, they warp our understanding and make it harder to change one’s mind as the situation changes.”

This part: Image
Read 4 tweets
Karen Vaites Profile picture
Feb 5
Our brains ARE wired to pick up spoken language naturally. Humans have been speaking for 50,000+ yrs.

But we've only been writing for 5,000 yrs!

Written language is manmade... and needs to be taught.

@carolyn_strom unpacks the brain science at #LiteracyMatters conference. Image
Parts of our brain are naturally wired to understand sounds and words.

But, no part of the brain comes wired at birth to understand letters / words.

With years of reading instruction, we train our brains to recognize words, as @carolyn_strom explains. Image
.@carolyn_strom has been working on ways to explain the neuroscience of reading to families, without all of the scientific jargon, using a storytelling framework.

She has given more accessible names to the parts of brain doing the work of learning language & literacy.
Read 10 tweets
Karen Vaites Profile picture
Jan 28
No organization has been more responsible for the shameful treatment of children during the pandemic than @AmerAcadPeds.

When we are deciding who gets a pass on their pandemic misses and who deserves extremely hard questions, AAP needs to go firmly in the latter camp.
Don’t forget that @AmerAcadPeds came out for school reopening in June, 2020… then reversed themselves less than 2 weeks later. They went on to stay silent as school closures dragged on for more than a year for kids in some regions.

Still no explanation for the reversal.
Now we see @AmerAcadPeds citing weak evidence for continued masking of kids:
Read 6 tweets
Karen Vaites Profile picture
Jan 28
.@michelleinbklyn calls for end of mandatory masking in schools post-Omicron, citing @ElissaPerkins @ErinBromage and recent writing on limited mask efficacy + costs to kids.

Making this the indisputable “Now It Can Be Said” week.

nytimes.com/2022/01/28/opi…
We had foreshadowing in her last column, which began talking about the harms of masking.

I’ll say again what I said the other day (thread)…

I hope @michelleinbklyn is connecting dots btwn voter sentiments and the *timing of* these Now It Can Be Said moments.
The often-misogynist conversation about parent advocacy for school reopening has been oversimplified to “Parents get angry with leaders when schools close.”

In fact, it’s more nuanced. Many have attempted rational tradeoff conversations for years & been rebuffed.

This part:
Read 6 tweets

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