Blog

Notes from the reading table.

Field notes on teaching reading — what works, what flops, and why a penguin in a bow tie beats a flashcard every time.

Teaching·August 18, 2026·5 min read

Why kids think reading is hard (and why they’re wrong)

A summer of teaching reading at camp taught me the problem is almost never the child. It’s that we hand them a wall of rules before we hand them a reason to care.

Curriculum·August 11, 2026·6 min read

Latin roots are cheat codes for big words

Teach a child one Latin root and you haven’t taught them one word — you’ve handed them the key to thirty. Here’s how I use roots to make “hard” vocabulary collapse into something obvious.

Behind the Scenes·August 4, 2026·5 min read

Meet the penguins: building characters kids want to learn from

Why a cast of arctic animals — and one menacing-but-harmless orca — does more for a struggling reader than any app feature we could ship. On character, safety, and the value of a good villain.