This summer I was lucky enough to attend the week-long Learning and the Brain conference entitled “The Neuroscience of Reading: Using Research to Understand Reading Acquisition and Disorders” at Boston University. I am so glad I went! I have long been interested in the science of the reading brain and fascinated by the remarkable feat that is reading, or as neuroscientist Dr. John Gabrieli put it during the first lecture, “language made visible.” It continues to amaze me that our brains are wired for speech but not print yet somehow our brains can develop the neural pathways necessary for reading.

We covered a lot over the course of the week, but I’ve synthesized the information I found most interesting below, and at some point, I’d love to find a way to share this with my colleagues:

There are three neural pathways for reading: two slower, analytic ones, the parieto-temporal and frontal, that are used mainly by beginning readers, for slowly sounding out words, and an express route, the occipito-temporal, relied on by experienced, skilled readers. Skilled readers activate highly interconnected neural systems that encompass regions in the back and front of the left side of the brain. Beginning readers must first analyze a word; skilled readers identify a word instantaneously. The parieto-temporal system works for the novice reader: slow and analytic, its function seems to be in the early stages of learning to read, that is, in initially analyzing a word, pulling it apart, and linking its letters to their sounds. In contrast, the occipito-temporal region is the express pathway to reading and is the one used by skilled readers. The more skilled the reader, the more they activate this region. It responds very rapidly (faster than a heartbeat) to seeing a word; instead of analyzing a word, the occipito-temporal area reacts almost instantaneously to the whole word as a pattern. One brief glance and the word is automatically identified on sight. The occipito-temporal region is referred to as the word form area or system.

After a child has analyzed and correctly read a word several times, they form an exact neural model of that specific word; the model (word form), reflecting the words spelling, its pronunciation, and its meaning, is now permanently stored in the occipito-temporal system. Subsequently, just seeing the word in print immediately activates the word form area and all the relevant information about that word. It all happens automatically, without conscious thought or effort. Readers shift from reliance on the temporoparietal region to the visual word form region, consistent with a shift from effortful phonological decoding to automatic word recognition as reading proficiency increases. As skilled readers speed through the text, the word form area is in full gear, instantly recognizing one word after another. There is a strong link between reading skill and reliance on the word form area.

The early learning of letters is as much a spatial problem as it is a language problem. The left hemisphere processes language and the right hemisphere is where visual spatial information is processed. There's a shift from right-hemisphere to left-hemisphere brain pathways for reading as children grow older. The right hemisphere is involved in early reading when the brain is focused on the spatial decoding of letters but once a child becomes a fluent reader they jump directly from print to meaning and it's no longer visual-spatial but a direct path to language and meaning. This early reliance on the right hemisphere explains why letter reversals are so common in beginning readers/writers: to recognize objects in the world, it’s helpful to generalize over left/right percepts, i.e., being able to recognize a tiger (or any threat) whether its left or right side is facing you is important; however, this generalization is not helpful for recognizing letters (e.g., letters such as b/d p/q.) Letter reversals are NOT an indicator of dyslexia. A chair is a chair no matter what, and children see letters the same way.

Units of written language vary across languages: alphabetic languages are ones where graphemes correspond to phonemes; regular languages approach one to one mapping. This is called orthographical transparency–how much a single letter or group of letters represents a single sound. Italian and Spanish are highly transparent, with nearly a 1:1 ratio of graphemes to phonemes, that is if you see how a word is spelled you know how to say it aloud. For example, in Italian, the ratio is 33 to 25 meaning there are 33 ways to write 25 sounds and children can become skilled readers in one year. English has poor transparency because it's full of exceptions (such as the silent s in island) with an average of nearly 30 alternative pronunciations for each grapheme. By contrast, English has 44 phonemes (sounds) but hundreds of ways to represent these sounds in writing: Consider the long u sound, which can be made in multiple ways: u (unicorn); u_e (cube); ou (you); eau (beauty); iew (view); eu (feud); yu (yule); ew (few); eue (queue)! Not surprisingly, it can take children 3 years to become skilled readers of English.

Dyslexia often arises from impaired phonological awareness which is the auditory analysis of spoken language that relates the sounds of language to print, or the auditory processing of the sounds of language. 5 to 17% of children have developmental dyslexia which is a persistent difficulty in learning to read that is not explained by sensory deficits, cognitive deficits, lack of motivation or lack of adequate reading instruction. Outside of school in fifth grade a good reader may read as many words in 2 days as a poor reader does in an entire year. Dyslexia is persistent: a student who fails to read adequately in first grade has a 90% probability of reading poorly in fourth grade and a 75% probability of reading poorly in high school.It’s characterized by difficulties in accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities; deficit in the phonological component of language; unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and the provision of effective classroom instruction; secondary consequences may include problems in reading comprehension and reduced reading experience that can impede growth of vocabulary and background knowledge; you need to be able to exclude cultural, educational, environmental, or other disabilities in order to diagnose it. The language itself drives the difficulties themselves. For example, in Spanish-speaking kids with dyslexia will likely have an easier time with spelling b/c language is phonetic but more challenges with fluent reading. The best predictors of future reading difficulty in pre-readers are challenges with phonological awareness w/ spoken language, rapid naming, and letter knowledge. Newborns from families with versus without familial risk for dyslexia exhibit differences in ERP responses to language sounds within hours or days of birth. (ERP stands for event-related potential and measures the brain’s electrical activity in response to a specific sensory, cognitive or motor event.) ERP responses to speech sounds within 36 hours of birth discriminated with over 81% accuracy those infants who would go on to become dyslexic readers at age 8. These studies indicate that brain differences are present near the time of birth that greatly enhance the risk for and underscore the developmental nature of dyslexia 

My curriculum redesign grant allowed me to rethink the entire sequence of upper level Latin at CPS. I was inspired by the new curriculum requirements set forth by the College Board for this year's AP Latin course, though at the same time, I was glad that I did not have to adopt all of the College Board's curriculum. I decided to adopt only the texts and passages that seemed genuinely interesting to me.

In Latin III, this means I will teach two of Pliny the Younger's letters about the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius (6.16 and 6.20) but not the other letters required by the College Board, and I will drop my Caesar units entirely (which had been part of the old AP course). I also decided to do a different Ovid unit than in previous years, as Daedalus and Icarus have sadly been feeling a little tired.

In Latin IV, I am going to teach all of the AP required Aeneid passages, which will include new passages from Books VII, XI, and XII, especially. I cut back on some of the passages that the AP no longer requires, and the overall number of lines in my course will be smaller. I think this will allow more room for discussion and deep engagement. I am excited to teach the story of Camilla (especially as a counterpart to Dido) and engage more deeply with the power dynamics between Juno and Jupiter in Book XII. I found some interesting scholarly articles to add to the syllabus, as well.

I spent a lot of time putting together brand new course readers for both of these courses, as I hope that a well-organized course reader will help students stay similarly well-organized.

In the future, what would I do differently? I think I can always be modifying and reassessing my curriculum. It was really nice to be able to let go of units and passages that I felt had gone stale for me and engage with newer material, so I hope to keep this in mind for future redesign opportunities.

I think one takeaway I had early on was that, since we do not have to get students ready for the AP test, I (and other teachers) should really be free to craft the best and most interesting courses possible. And I think this will be such a positive change for the students, too, as we are doing less rapid "coverage" and getting more time to enjoy the language, the history, and the poetry. 

This was a self-directed experience that took place over the summer. I learned A LOT from this PD. The deep dive I took into the intellectual and political history of conservatism and the new right was fascinating. It will certainly inform new readings and unit schemas for both my Incarceration Nation and History of Capitalism courses. I don't know if "inspiring" is quite the right word, but my readings (and I listened to a lot of podcasts too) really made clear how today's new right is composed both of discrete and disparate (and in many ways irreconcilable) tendencies, but that there are also significant places where their political projects align so they can operate as a bloc to, say, dismantle the administrative state. I am better able to identify throughlines in various formations of conservative and reactionary intellectual history, and in particular I can see how and why certain ideas seem to be recurring in the present (e.g., the return to open discourse about eugenics). As with any good dive into the critical literature on a topic, this one raised as many (if not more) questions than it answered. I am excited to continue my studies on this topic over the course of this school year and the years ahead. I have certainly learned things that can be brought back to department meetings, especially with respect to the history of postwar conservatism, but in particular its development since the 1990s and the impact those transformations have had on the present. I imagine this will really be put into action as we begin reimagining the US curriculum in the next year. I also did a bit of a dive into what have been called the TESCREAL bundle (it's an acronym that names the constellation of shared an overlapping ideologies that most players in the AI space subscribe to [i.e., Musk, Altman, Andreesen, Thiel, SBF, etc.]: Transhumanism, Extropianism, Singularitarianism, Cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism, and Longtermism) by Timnit Gebru and Emil Torres (Gebru is a Stanford CompSci PhD and former Apple and Google AI engineer who has become an outspoken critic of the ways in which generative AI is being rolled out to the public, Torres is a moral philosopher who studies the history of human ideas about species extinction) and it has provided me with a very interesting perspective about AI that I'm happy to bring to the department meetings. As far as student experiences...in addition to the stuff I already mentioned about readings and unit-level changes that this will bring to my seminars, I am also planning on leading at least two Common Classrooms that come out of this PD. One will be--I think--about the importance of the 1990s to the current moment (not just the baggy pants, but the return of Charles Murray-style IQ politics and the relationship between Pat Buchanan's platform and the MAGA one), and the other will be about how to think about the current intensification of immigration restriction, control, deportation, penal colonization, etc., and the broader carceral landscape.  

What did I learn?
The National Federation of High School Associations professional development meeting on policy debate topic selection provided me with three key learning opportunities. First, I gained valuable insight into the topic proposal process. Second, I participated as a committee member in narrowing down potential debate topics for the 2026-2027 school year. Third, I developed a deeper understanding of curriculum development for the introductory speech and debate class. How did it strengthen my practice? The topic writing and selection process showed me how prominent national circuit coaches approach topic development and the criteria they prioritize when considering research agendas and curriculum planning. I learned about balancing multiple considerations: cultivating interest among first-year students, maintaining engagement for multi-year participants, and creating research opportunities that expand the scope of ideas throughout the year.

What questions did it bring up for me?
I still have many questions about how the priorities of national-level coaches align with the broader community during the voting process later in the year. While this meeting is intended to serve the needs of the entire debate community, I'm curious about how coaches across the country select topics and whether their preferences align with those of the participants who attend these in-person meetings.

What was inspiring about it?
Several discussions I had over the weekend gave me greater insight into how to balance the needs of sometimes disparate groups within the activity. This understanding will help in narrowing down topics to something that serves everyone, regardless of experience or competitive level.

How might this change my students' experiences?
This experience will help me ensure that our policy debate topics remain fresh and engaging rather than becoming stale during the school year, benefiting both newcomers and experienced debaters in our program.

I learned some great techniques for oral history interviews ("ask simple, factual questions," "use a prop, like an artifact or photo to get the interviewee to say more") as well as a technique for turning creative nonfiction writing into dialogue or an internal monologue that could be accompanied by images for a comic. While this technique was geared more towards essayists (or for an "English" class), I see how it could be converted into an assignment for a history class. I also learned some visual analysis skills that are specific to comics that I could use in my class. Finally, I learned more from the author (Thi Bui) why she made the narrative and visual choices that she made in her memoir--centering the humanity of her characters and foregrounding a family history of survival during and after the Vietnam War. I found this compelling as the war itself--its geopolitics, especially--can often dominate historical narratives and make it difficult to remember the lived experience, which is in many ways (my view at least) the stuff of history and why history is important (the impact of large historical events on individuals or families).

PS: The photo is a picture of the author's autograph! I asked her to sign my book and received both a signature and sketch.