After a year and a half of COVID-19, many parents are asking, exactly what should my child be learning this year?  Many parents are being confronted with requests to have their child “redo” a year in school.  At the same time, many other parents are complaining that the school has skipped over a year and left their child behind.
 
As one parent said, “He wasn’t in kindergarten last year, and now they're demanding that he start reading.”
 
As I explained in an earlier blog post, “redoing” a grade is not a good idea.  Instead, what we need to do is reteach the material that was missed.

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For More Information: Should Children “Redo” a Year Because of the Pandemic? 
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Schools should also not simply skip over a year and think that students will figure it out as they go along.  No, schools must reteach.
 
So, the question then is:  What is the best way to reteach in order to bring students back up to where they should be in school?

Reteaching does work. 
If we use better teaching methods in the classroom, we can bring children up one to two to three grade levels in only a few months.  At my reading clinic, I had two struggling students move up two grade levels in reading after only 48 hours of instruction. 
 
Yes, we can correct the educational problems that were created by the coronavirus pandemic.  We just need to use the correct teaching methods.  Phonics and whole language are not the correct teaching methods for struggling at-risk students. 
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For More Information: Reading Wars are Over!  Phonics Failed.  Whole Language Failed.  Balanced Literacy Failed. Who Won?  It Certainly Wasn’t the Students.
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Phonics and Whole Language Were Failing Before the Pandemic
Dr. Jeffrey S. Bowers, professor at the University of Bristol’s School of Psychological Science, Bristol Neuroscience states that we cannot expect phonics, whole language, or balanced literacy to help struggling students learn how to read.  In his research, he explains how these methods have been proven not to work with struggling students. 
 
Therefore, just placing children back in the classroom, with or without masks, will not automatically teach them to read.  While we are teaching children to wash their hands (Yes, I think teaching children to wash their hands is important.  Wearing masks is important, too), we also need to change how we teach children to read.
 
What Bowers and others are saying is that you can not blame the pandemic or the students.  This problem existed long before COVID-19. 
 
Gerald Hughes, Director of the Neuro-Linguistic Learning Center, explains in his book, Gifted--Not Broken: Overcoming Dyslexia, ADD and Other Learning Challenges, states that long-standing research shows that phonics programs have little benefit: 
 
“20% of all children will show little or no lasting improvement in reading ability using phonics-based programs….using a phonics-based program on this particular group of children, is more than likely doomed to failure because it is focused on the very weaknesses of the child. Experience has repeatedly shown that when subjected to an extensive phonics-based program, many of these children will experience frustration, anger and ultimately continued failure.”

So, what we are saying is that schools are using an ineffective teaching method that fails students, and then blames those students for failing. 

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For More Information: Is Teaching Decoding and Encoding A Form of Phonics?  No! 
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​What Should Kindergarteners Be Learning?
Back to the plea for help from the parent of a first grader who is being pushed into reading without the benefit of kindergarten.  No, the answer is not to send the child back to kindergarten.  The answer is also not to push the child straight into reading. 
The answer is to teach the child to work with letter sounds.  Then, and only then, will the child be ready to learn to read.
 
Learn The Alphabet: Capitals and Lower-Case Letters
First, start by making sure the child understands the alphabet letters, both capitals and lower-case letters.  By understanding, I mean that the child is able to do more than just sing the alphabet song.  I love the alphabet song, but it will not teach children how to read.
 
Four- and five-year-olds should be working on consonant letter sounds instead of trying to learn to read.  Some children naturally read at four and five years of age, and that’s fine. What I am saying is, do not push reading too early. 
 
Teach consonant sounds first. Memorizing a word list will not teach children how to read.  Teaching children to work with letter sounds and to understand the sounds that letters represent is the path to successful reading.  If your school is sending home a list of words for your child to memorize each week, tell them they are doing it wrong.  That is not the way to teach children to read.
 
To succeed in the classroom, students need to go beyond just recognizing that letters represent sounds.  They need to learn how to work with letter sounds. 
 
Letters in the English alphabet have both a LETTER NAME and a LETTER SOUND.  In order to read, write, and understand English, children must learn both the letter name and the letter sound.  For example, when we spell a word, we use the letter name.  When we read, even when we read silently, we use letter sounds, saying only the sound each letter represents.  It is important that you teach children how to say the letter sound correctly.  Remember, we are training the brain, so we want to train the brain to hear and identify the letter sound correctly. My reading clinic also uses auditory, visual, and hands-on teaching techniques for helping children learn tricky letter sounds.
 
 
Handwriting Is Essential
Handwriting and reading are connected, so, if you want to teach a child to read, you must also teach a child to write.  Improving a child’s handwriting is one of the first steps in helping a child learn to read. 
 
The way a child writes or shapes letters is very important.  Researchers Karin James and Laura Engelhardt conducted neurological research that showed the benefit of teaching children to correctly shape letters when they write.  Improved handwriting is the pathway to better reading.
 
Neurological research also shows that typing on a computer does not give the same benefit that handwriting does.  If you want to teach your child to read, first, teach your child how to write and shape the alphabet letters correctly.
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For More Information: Correct Handwriting Helps Children Learn to Read
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Why Should Students Spend Time Building Words? 
Teaching the alphabet and handwriting are just the beginning.  Kindergartners should also learn how to build words from letter sounds.
 
The concept of building words is a better teaching method because, as Dr. Nadine Gaab from the Children’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School, explains, students must learn how to “map” oral sounds to written letters. 
 
Dr. Gaab goes on to explain that relating letter sounds to written language is one of the essential elements required before a child can learn to read.  Preschool children, early readers, and even adults have shown positive improvement in reading skills upon receiving training in letter-sound relationships.  A research team from the McGovern Institute for Brain Research also stated that the sound structure of spoken words must be “mapped” onto the letters of the alphabet before children can learn to read
 
“Sound training,” as Dr. Gaab explains, is the first step in learning to read. 
 
Children automatically learn a spoken language just by listening to their parents speak, but children do not learn to read just by listening to someone else read.  Children must learn and understand letter-sound relationships so that they can “map” or relate the oral sounds of spoken language to the corresponding printed letters that represent those sounds
  
This is one of the reasons why vowel clustering is so much more successful with at-risk readers than phonics.  Phonics does not teach students to build words.  All children need to learn about letter-sound relationships, but for children who struggle, letter-sound relationship training is essential.  Vowel clustering provides this letter-sound training by teaching students to build words. 
 
 
How Does Vowel Clustering Teach Building Words?           
Remember, letters represent sounds.  For learning the sounds, we mostly use the lowercase letters.  Do not let your students substitute capital letters into the words.  When students substitute a capital letter in the middle of a word, it usually means that they do not know the lower-case letter.  Teach lower-case letters.  We also know that vowels are one of the key factors in how a word is pronounced, so we want to teach letter sounds in relationship to vowels.  Building words with a common vowel sound helps students visualize how words are formed.  
 
When I teach vowel clustering, I teach students to build words, such as with the sound at.  Students start with:  at, bat, cat….  Then they change to:  an, can, fan….  Also use ap for cap, map, ….  We begin teaching letter-sound relationships with simple one syllable words.  The main rule for word building by sound is that the vowel sound stays constant--does not change.  For example, building words with the short a vowel sound would mean that you cannot insert such words as able, cake, car….  Yes, these words use the letter a, but they use different sounds for the letter a.  Remember, there are seven sounds for the letter a and 22 different ways to make those sounds.  In word building by sound, you teach one sound at a time.
 
Do not fall into the trap of teaching letter sounds with multiple vowels or by focusing on the first letter in the word.  This is often done in school.  It is wrong.  The dictionary arranges words in alphabetical order based on the beginning letter, but the brain does not.  Do not try to teach:  ball, bell, big, bog, bug.  At-risk students will be totally confused because this is not how the brain organizes letter sounds. 
 
The brain focuses on the vowel sound in the word.  Therefore, we need to teach children to read by focusing on common vowel sounds:  at, cat, fat, hat, mat….  If we teach using the organizational structure that the brain uses, it makes it easier for at-risk students to learn.  This is what vowel clustering does.
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For More Information: Grade Retention Doesn't Work; Better Teaching Methods Work
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Students must see, indeed, visualize, how words change in spelling, pronunciation, and in meaning while they are working with very simple words.  The process of writing and correctly shaping letters on a manuscript page helps students accurately identify letters in words as they read
 
Teach letter sound relationships and basic spelling one sound at a time, particularly with the vowel sounds, because we are training the brain.  Spelling and handwriting should always be taught at the same time as reading.  When you have students build words by sound, have the student read the words on their word list.  Then, call out each word and have the student spell each word on their list. Make sure the student knows the definition for each word and can orally use the word in a sentence.  When the student writes, make sure that the student is shaping all letters correctly.  Words or letters sprawled across an unlined page do not count as handwriting. 
 
When we are building words by sound, the vowel sound stays the same even though the consonant sounds are changing. You want the student to learn to work with words, changing letters to make new words, but you do not want the student to memorize a word list.  Memorizing is the wrong way to teach.  Instead, we want to train the brain to recognize letter-sound combinations.
 
 
Will My Child Ever Catch up from the Pandemic?
Yes, we can teach at-risk students to read.  Neuroimaging studies show that students who have failed for multiple years can be taught to read.  Even students who fell behind during the pandemic can be brought back up to their age-level in reading.
 
My own work with vowel clustering demonstrates that students who have failed for multiple years can definitely be taught to read. 

• A student diagnosed with ADHD and failing in reading moved up two grade levels in one year.
• One student started at the pre-primer level (pre-K) and ended the year at the third-grade reading level.
• A second grader started the year reading below first grade and ended at the fourth-grade level.

 
Don’t let your child’s education suffer from the coronavirus pandemic.  Insist that your school teach using methods that have been proven to work.  It’s time for a change.

Misinformation is not just a difference of opinion.  Misinformation can kill. 

• A 15-year-old girl died this past week from COVID in Pensacola, Florida.  She wasn't vaccinated.  Her father regrets not having gotten his daughter vaccinated and said, “It’s something that’s going to be stuck with me for my whole life, thinking maybe I should have done that sooner….  Maybe I could’ve done something to help prevent this.”

 

• A 15-year-old boy died on September 5th from COVID in Louisville, Kentucky.  He wasn't vaccinated.  His father said, "I'm going to do my part....  I’m going to go take my vaccine….  As bad as it sounds, once it affects them personally, then they'll change their minds."  The father is also now encouraging everyone to wear a mask. 

  
These are just two tragedies that might have been prevented.  One father said he had been waiting for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to give final approval on the vaccine.  The FDA granted full approval of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine on August 23, 2021, and 15-year-olds have been eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine since May 12, 2021.
 
Why did these parents wait?  Why did they risk their children's lives?  I contend because they listened to misinformation.
 
Dangerous Misinformation

Let’s look at an example of dangerous misinformation.  This is an example of a false claim—misinformation with the intent to mislead others. Reports such as this one have many parents confused about what is true and what is false.  Remember, this internet example has been proven to be false—a lie.  Tom Kertscher wrote this report on the false claim:
 
“A healthy Colorado teen died two days after receiving a coronavirus vaccine, according to a number of websites, including the conspiracy oriented InfoWars. This was the headline on WeLoveTrump.com, which a reader asked us to check: 

“15-Year Old Boy Passes Away from Heart Attack Two Days After Pfizer COVID-19 Experimental Jab."

“The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed.” 

As far as anyone knows and could discover, there was no Colorado teen who died from the vaccine.  This was an out-and-out lie to intentionally mislead people, especially parents who were nervous or afraid of the vaccine.  Why would someone intentionally do this?  This is misinformation of a most evil nature.  As I mentioned at the beginning, young people are dying because they have not received the vaccine. 
 
As a psychologist who works with children, I know exactly how damaging misinformation can be. I direct a reading clinic for children who are struggling or failing in reading.  We've been wonderfully successful and have even had failing children move up as much as four grade levels in reading in one year.  Yet, I will never forget a young man who tried to commit suicide one afternoon because of misinformation that he had been told the day before by an adult not associated with my program. 

 
Yes, misinformation can kill.
 
Misinformation is not some political game or a simple political difference of opinion.  Children are dying, and while children are dying, politicians, people who oppose the vaccine, and those who oppose wearing masks are spreading misinformation and demanding their “freedom to choose.”
 
 
When will children be allowed “to choose” to live?
 
Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, explained why the coronavirus is so much more dangerous for children at school this year than last year.  As he said in a recent interview, delta is more dangerous for children because it's so much easier to catch the virus in the classroom.

 
“…more than 400 children have died of COVID-19. And right now we have almost 2,000 kids in the hospital, many of them in ICU, some of them under the age of four….  This means that “kids are very seriously at risk….”
 
According to the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), as of September 18, 2021, 159 children between the ages of 0 to 4 years old have died from COVID and 357 have died between the ages of 5 and 18 years old.  That is a total of 486 children. 
 
Yes, I know that there are people gossiping on the Internet claiming that 486 deaths is not a significant number.  They say that more children die from other causes and then go on to justify their claim by telling how many died from guns, auto accidents….  The old saying that two wrongs do not make a right still applies.  It is time to stop gossiping on social media and do something because….
 
COVID-19 is spreading through the schools like wildfire.

COVID-19 can be very dangerous for children.

COVID-19 definitely affects children’s ability to learn.

 
Earlier Post: We Must Have Mask and Vaccine Mandates to Protect Children
 

Would stopping the spread of misinformation prevent children from dying?

The experts – the people who know what they’re talking about – believe that it would.  Dr. Joseph Khabbaza, M.D., critical care specialist and pulmonary care expert at Cleveland Clinic, does not specifically talk about misinformation, but he does explain how important it is for us to use preventive measures, which are often the target of misinformation.  Dr. Khabbaza says that:
 
“The more things you do that are meant to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the more successful they’ll be….  So get vaccinated, first and foremost, then keep taking the actions that we know will keep us more protected from infection: masking, social distancing, hand-washing, staying outdoors, opening windows, and the like.”
 
Therefore, preventive measures, such as wearing a mask and getting vaccinated, are extremely important to preventing the spread of COVID-19, delta variant.  If misinformation keeps people from getting vaccinated or from wearing a mask, then yes, misinformation is extremely dangerous and should be stopped.

 
How can we tell if information on social media is true or false?

We're going to examine two examples of bad social media misinformation.  My purpose is to give you some guidelines on how to evaluate what you read on social media, so I have picked two really bad examples—out-and-out lies.
 
First, let's go back to our previous example of a false claim or lie that was placed on Facebook.  Remember, this claim has been proven to be wrong and has since been removed from Facebook.
 
"15-Year Old Boy Passes Away from Heart Attack Two Days After Pfizer COVID-19 Experimental Jab."
 
 
What alerts us to the fact that this is misinformation?

1. The claim did not include a link to further information. Usually, when you read a bold statement on social media, there should be a link to send you to further explanation or evidence.  If you are reading a bold statement such as the one above and are not able to find evidence or justification for it, it is most likely a lie.  If someone actually had evidence, they would share it with everyone.  Remember, gossip and lies do not have evidence to support them.
2. Evaluate the site that you're reading.  Is the site primarily for entertainment purposes or for factual information?  We all read gossipy social media sites occasionally, but before you believe what is printed or spoken, check the source.  Is the site primarily a biased source, a gossip source, or a political source?  Unfortunately, the majority of social media sites are biased.  Political sites often distort, even just a little bit, to make their position or candidate sound better.  COVID-19 is a health issue, not a political one, so turn to health sites for health issues.  You do not take your children to a politician when they are sick.  You go to the doctor, so go to a doctor for information about your child’s health.  Stop trusting politicians with your child’s health.
3. Check the source, the author of the information.  Is this person an expert? This is one of our biggest problems with misinformation.  Most of us can tell whether a site offers evidence or comes from an unbiased source, but how do we tell the difference among rival experts?  Let's look at our second example of misinformation.  A lawyer used misinformation from an online source in court for a lawsuit.  Devon Link from USA Today writes this report:

 
“On July 19, attorney Thomas Renz filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on behalf of America’s Frontline Doctors – an organization known for spreading misinformation about vaccines and COVID-19 treatments.
 
“In the complaint, Renz described an analysis from an unnamed whistleblower that claimed to find evidence there were actually 45,000 deaths related to COVID-19 vaccines. This finding is based on the whistleblower's alleged expert analysis of unverified data.”
 
Several fact checkers investigated the lawyer’s claim and found absolutely no evidence to support the misinformation that he quoted in court. Yet, the misinformation is still being shared online, even after it has been proven to be false--a lie.
 
Let me quote one report that shows how this story is ongoing because misinformation from this one lie is still being spread on social media.  This story refers to the whistleblower account as the “BitChute video.”

 
“…the BitChute video has been viewed at least 13,000 times, and has been amplified by the Daily Expose and other disinformation sites. Other sources of misinformation shared the video. They include Denis Rancourt, a former professor of physics at the University of Ottawa, who shared the video in a post with at least 555 retweets. Rancourt has previously shared misinformation about face masks ….  The video has also appeared on Rumble.
 
“Anti-vaccine actors often intentionally distort data published on VAERS, which was set up for early warning purposes and may contain “incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental, or unverifiable” information. VAERS reports have frequently been cited in misleading ways to spread misinformation about the safety and efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines.”
 
 
Do you see how the lie just keeps spreading from one social media site to another?  It’s still ongoing today, right this minute.  Once it starts on social media, misinformation is very hard to stop.  There are parents who are still refusing to get their children vaccinated because they believe this lie.  Yes, misinformation can and does kill children.
 
So, how do you tell a good expert from a bad expert? 

With my own writing, I try to be very accurate.  I check and double check my sources.  I'm a psychologist, and I am writing as a psychologist.  I'm trying to present the best, most accurate information that I can find.

Unfortunately, as our earlier example from the courtroom shows, it is hard to tell when someone is telling the truth.  Just checking someone’s credentials is often not enough.
There is no clear-cut answer for deciding which expert to believe.  My response is:  Would you trust this person with your child’s life?  Would you call this person if your child was sick?  If your child does get COVID, is this where you will take your child for treatment?
 
If not, then I wouldn’t trust them with my child’s life because that is what you are doing when you fall victim to these social media sites that thrive on spreading misinformation.
 
Don't be a victim of misinformation.  Evaluate everything you read online and in print.  Also, evaluate what you hear on the radio and on TV.

Don't fall victim to misinformation on social media.  The life you save may be your own or your child's.  Don't be swayed by gossip.  Search for the truth.

How can any adult justify laughing or heckling a student who stands up to explain how he felt when his grandmother died?  Yes, the video has been all over the Internet, but just in case you missed it, this is one video you should definitely watch. 
 
Adults Should Never Laugh at Children

It would have been rude to even laugh at an adult in such a situation, but to laugh at a young person is ten times worse.  What kind of person would do that?
 
Grady Knox, an 11th grader, was standing up in front of a roomful of people talking to the Rutherford County School Board in Tennessee explaining why he thought it was important for the schools to require masks.  This was his right.  He has a right to give his opinion, and he has a right to receive respect while speaking. 
 
We always tell young people that they must show adults respect.  Yet, where was Grady Knox’s respect?  He was heckled by people who scream and yell day and night about their freedom.  Where was Grady Knox’s freedom? 
 
If this had taken place at school between students, the laughing, heckling students would have been marched to the principal’s office.  Almost every school has an anti-bullying policy.  Yes, the rude members of the audience were trying to get Grady Knox to stop speaking--that is a form of bullying.
 
In his speech, Grady Knox said,
 
"This time last year, my grandmother, who was a former teacher at the Rutherford County school system died of COVID because someone wasn't wearing a mask…."
 
He actually had to pause and turn around to look at the audience members sitting behind him with their professional, commercially made signs.  They were making so much noise he couldn’t continue, but he did continue.  As a psychologist, I am so very proud of this young man.  He did not let a group of adult bullies stop him from speaking at the school board meeting.
 
Then, he went on to say,
 
“As long as I can get my message across, I don't really think it matters what the crowd thinks of me….  Overall, they're not the ones making the decisions for the school.”
 
At my reading clinic, we talk every single day about how important it is to be kind and supportive of one another.  I would never allow students to laugh at another student, no matter what the reason.  Laughing at others is wrong.
 
Rutherford County's school board later announced they would be adopting a “temporary 30 day mask requirement” for all schools.  It’s a start, but it will take more than a mere 30 days to protect the children.
 
Yes, I've talked before about how important it is to have mask mandates in our schools.  We need all students, teachers, staff, and parents wearing masks when they come inside school buildings.  We also need more young people like Grady Knox, who will stand up to the bullies, say what needs to be said, and continue to fight for the health and safety of everyone.  Thank you, Grady Knox.  May you always be an example to others. 
 
Mask Mandates Do Not Cause Medical or Psychological Harms to Children

We Must Have Mask Mandates to Protect Children from the Delta Variant

Can you imagine writing a letter to your children saying that you’re sorry you are sending them to school?  One mother did. 

“An open letter to my daughters:

Dear Charlie and Sophie,

I’m sorry.

Tomorrow I have to send you back to school. I know that, as a first grader and kindergartner, you are not protected and cannot get the “shots” ….

I know I am sending you into a school where…  parents did not send them [other children] in masks…. teachers and officials at your school won’t be wearing masks either….  They’ll even ask you to take off your mask indoors so you can “breathe”

…  I am going to ask you to wear your mask anyway because I think we should try not to catch COVID….”
​
 
More than 500,000 children tested positive for coronavirus in the United States between August 5 and August 26.  

​Almost half of the cases (203,962) were during prime school start-up dates from August 19 to August 26, and it’s getting worse every day.  It seems that we are not sending our children back to school to get an education, we are sending them back to school to catch Covid-19—Delta variant.

A study just released on September 3, 2021, shows that the hospital rates for young people have skyrocketed for COVID-19 by jumping nearly 500% since late June.  This jump is mostly blamed on the Delta variant.  The study also found that adolescents aged 12 and up who were not vaccinated were ten times more likely to be hospitalized than adolescents who had received the vaccine.  This graphic from the study illustrates the problem: 

 









Why are so many more children getting COVID this year than last year?
The Delta variant is new. It is different from the coronavirus that we confronted last year in school.  The Delta variant is much more contagious and easier to catch.  It spreads more easily; even infants and toddlers can spread the Delta variant.
 
To illustrate how easily the Delta variant can spread in classrooms, let’s look at one careless, sad example. In this example, one teacher spread coronavirus to many students:
 
An unvaccinated teacher from Marin County, California decided to go ahead and go to school and teach one day even though she had a cough, slight fever, and a headache. During reading time, she decided to take her mask off to read to her students.  Although the students were wearing masks, 80% of the students sitting in the first two rows, those closest to the teacher while she was reading, later tested positive for COVID-19.  Four siblings of these infected students also came down with COVID.  Four parents of children who tested positive from this one classroom episode, also came down with COVID, and only one parent was unvaccinated.  Six students tested positive for COVID after a sleepover that was hosted by one of the students from the original class.  None of the students were eligible for vaccine because they were younger than 12 years old.  Of the 26 elementary students who caught COVID from this one unvaccinated teacher removing her mask to read a story, 18 of the students were tested and found to have the Delta variant.

This example shows how easily community spread gets started.  One unvaccinated teacher, who took her mask off only to read to her students, infected 26 elementary age students with COVID. Who knows how far it spread through the community? Classrooms have become incubators for COVID.  School classrooms are one of the primary places that children are now catching COVID-19. 
 
 
We must stop the spread of coronavirus among our children. 
 
Yes, I know, there are still people saying that COVID is not that bad and that it is not as serious for children. 
 
However, is that actually true?  Remember, I have talked about misinformation before.  We need to reexamine the facts.  We need to stop listening to people who do not know what they are talking about.  Just because you read it on the Internet, hear it on the radio, or see it on the TV does not make what the person is saying true.  In everything that I write, I give you the information’s actual source, and I encourage you to go to that original study or source and read the facts.  If you have nothing to hide, you have no reason not to show your sources and make it easy for others to also read those sources.  I always encourage my readers to check the sources, and I try to make it easy for you to find good quality information.  Dig a little deeper; insist on knowing the truth; don’t fall for misinformation or lies—children’s lives are at stake. 
 
The truth is that over 400 children have died from COVID-19 in the United States, and more are dying every day.  COVID is making schools a dangerous place for children. 
 
Why is Covid more dangerous for children this year than last year?
As I have said before, the Delta variant is not the same as the COVID-19 that children faced last year in school.  This is a more easily transmitted disease variant.  As Mark Wietecha, CEO of the Children's Hospital Association, explained,
 
“… many children hospitalized with COVID-19 now, likely driven by the Delta variant, are sicker than those who had contracted previous strains.” 
 
So, the Delta variant this year is more dangerous for children because (1) it’s easier to catch which means that more children are getting COVID this year than last and (2) because children are becoming “sicker” from COVID this year than last year. 
 
What are we as a nation doing about this increased risk and danger to our children?  We are demanding that they absolutely must attend in-class instruction with no guarantee of masks and no assurance that anyone will bother to get vaccinated.  In some states, governors and other politicians are even fighting tooth and nail to try and keep anyone from wearing a mask in school.  They say we need the “freedom” to choose.  Unfortunately, children younger than 12 years do not even have a choice about getting vaccinated to protect themselves; they’re not eligible.  Where is their freedom?
 
Remember, our earlier example with the unvaccinated teacher who took her mask off to read to the children?  Yes, she had “the freedom to choose.”  She chose not to wear a mask and not to get vaccinated which meant she thereby chose to infect 26 children with COVID-19, all under the age of 12.
 
Anytime you choose not to wear a mask, to take your mask off—even temporarily, or not to get vaccinated, you are choosing to expose an innocent child to COVID-19, either through classroom exposure, family, or community spread.  Either way, you are still responsible.  Your “freedom to choose” may seriously harm the life of a trusting child.
 
We need to start making wiser choices.  We as adults do not have the right to choose to make children sick and to endanger their lives.
 
Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, explained why Delta is so much more dangerous for children in a recent interview.
 
“…more than 400 children have died of COVID-19. And right now we have almost 2,000 kids in the hospital, many of them in ICU, some of them under the age of four….  This means that “kids are very seriously at risk….”
 
The Delta variant is more dangerous than a cold or the flu.  According to the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report by the CDC, of those 2,000 children who are in the hospital, one-third are in intensive care (ICU).  Anytime a child is placed in ICU, it is serious. COVID affects all ages.  Even infants have been so seriously affected by Delta that they have had to be placed in ICU.  COVID is also causing many long-term health problems for children. 

 
What is long-term COVID?
 
Some children experience post-COVID conditions—new, returning, or even on-going health problems caused by COVID-19.

• One student went from playing on 3 basketball teams simultaneously to having trouble even walking for 10 minutes.  As her mother explained, "Her central nervous system has just been trashed. It's like a tornado just went through… No one really knows what the next steps are or how the recovery  looks…. "

 
Six months after COVID, the student has “… graduated from a liquid diet to rice, soup, and applesauce.”  Unfortunately, the doctors still do not know whether she will completely recover.  She did not have preexisting conditions. 
  
Covid patients are also showing cognitive problems that directly affect their ability to learn in the classroom.

• A 15-year-old explained that when he returned to school, class work that he had previously completed looked totally confusing to him; in fact, he was convinced that he had never even seen the paper before.  Yet, his teacher reminded him that before COVID-19, he had been acing this material. It wasn't just a cognitive “mix-up,” the student said numbers floated off the page in math class, and he actually inserted French phrases into his English assignment.  Before COVID, he was a top student.  Now, he asks, "Am I going to be able to be a good student ever again? Because this is really scary."

  
Dr. Molly Wilson-Murphy of Boston Children's Hospital contends that not only ICU patients can experience long-term COVID conditions.  As she states, some children start out with quite mild illnesses and then later develop long term symptoms.  Fatigue, headaches, brain fog, and issues with memory and concentration are common among long-term COVID patients.
 
Dr. Gary Kirkilas, a pediatrician at Phoenix Children’s Hospital, goes on to explain another long-term condition called MIS-C.
 
“… COVID-19 has been linked to a serious condition called multisystem inflammatory syndrome in which different organs such as the heart or brain become inflamed. This may occur weeks after a child has been infected, and as of late July the CDC has received reports of more than 4,400 children who have been diagnosed with the condition (which is known as MIS-C in children).”
 
So, you see, the “freedom to choose” has directly affected and changed many young people’s lives.
 
Physicians are not sure why some children get long-term COVID conditions and some do not, but it is clear that COVID-19 can be very serious for children.  The Delta variant is not like a common cold or even a seasonal flu. The Delta variant is a treacherous virus that can change a child's life forever.
 
Dr. Andrew E. Budson, M. D. writing for Harvard Health Publishing of the Harvard Medical School, says that:
 
“The COVID pandemic has now claimed as many American lives as World War I, the Vietnam War, and the Korean War combined.  Most of these deaths are due to the well-known pulmonary complications of the coronavirus. It has become increasingly recognized, however, that the virus also attacks the nervous system. Doctors in a large Chicago medical center found that more than 40% of patients with COVID showed neurologic manifestations at the outset, and more than 30% of those had impaired cognition.”
 
Although some people who have recovered from COVID, including children, go and resume their daily lives without difficulty, there are many who do not.  Some have difficulty and struggle for long periods of time while others never recover.  Their lives are changed forever.  We need to stop and think about what we're sending children into when we send children into the classroom to confront the Delta variant.  COVID-19 can attack any child, and there is no way to determine how serious the results will be.
Any COVID patient placed in ICU is at high risk for brain damage.  It is particularly dangerous for children because their brains are still developing.  If “brain growth” is stunted or stopped, then the damage can be permanent.  One example is Nia Haughton, a 15-year-old survivor who still struggles to find the right words to say when she speaks and has a patchy memory.
 
“For days, her lungs labored to stave off collapse until the medical staff tried “proning” her for 16 hours a day.  … Nia was turned to lie on her front at a slight incline, but kept on ventilation…. This approach allows oxygen to be blasted to the back of a patient’s lungs…. after several days in recovery, her condition worsened once again. This time, it was her brain rather than her lungs….  After repeated, violent seizures … she was taken back into the ICU.  … Nia’s voice and behavior appeared to regress to a younger version of herself. 
 
Her mother said, “I don't know which was scarier, her being on the ventilator not being able to breathe, or the fact that she came out of it with a completely different personality….”
 
Even cases of mild COVID can still lead to brain damage. The cognitive effects of COVID on memory, attention, and executive function (the mental skills and processes that allow a person to think and get things done) can be extremely damaging to children.  A child who experiences a sustained attention loss from COVID will have trouble learning in the classroom.  In many of my reading blogs, I frequently talk about “changing the gray matter of the brain” and “rewiring the connections in the brain.”  This process is essential in order to teach children who struggle to learn to read.
  
Attention deficits - a child's ability to pay attention - can cause a child to have difficulty learning to read or be successful in the classroom.  Executive function is also affected by COVID. The mental wiring, connections in the brain, and the cognitive ability to think are essential for all learning that takes place in the classroom.
 
Yet, when we send children into the classroom without any kind of protection from COVID, no mask, no vaccines, then we are willingly endangering children's ability to learn. 
 
Wait!  Isn't the reason we're sending children to school because we want them to learn?  Unfortunately, by exposing children to COVID, we are destroying the very education we say that we want.
 
Delta is dangerous for children. 

Politicians can no longer say that it is okay to send children back to school because COVID-19 is not dangerous for children or claim that children do not catch COVID.  As the Broward County Public Schools in Florida reported, “… 357 students and employees have tested positive since the start of school.” 
​
Yes, reopening schools has caused a major surge in COVID-19. This surge directly affects children.  Each time you march in the street, stand at a microphone and demand freedom, protest mask or vaccine mandates, or refuse to get vaccinated or wear a mask because you say that you have the “freedom to choose,” you have stolen “life” from a child. 
 
What do We Know so far?

• COVID-19 is spreading through the schools like wildfire.
• COVID-19 can be very dangerous for children.
• COVID-19 definitely effects children’s ability to learn.

 
So, why are some parents, politicians, and in some cases even teachers fighting mask and vaccine mandates? 
 
We need both mask and vaccine mandates in all schools. 
 
 
Why do we need both mask and vaccine mandates?  Why are masks alone not enough?
 
Study after study shows that states with high vaccination rates have lower COVID-19 infections.  No, not zero but lower.  Vaccine mandates do save many children from COVID-19. 
 
In one study that measured COVID-19 cases among young people during a two-week period in August 2021, the number of children placed in the hospital was higher in states with low vaccination rates.  In states, where more people were vaccinated, COVID-19 cases were lower.  Children living in states with low vaccination rates were three times as likely to be placed in the hospital.  We must stop using children as political pawns.  We must have vaccine mandates to protect our children.  This graphic from the study shows the difference between being vaccinated and not being vaccinated.

 
Schoolwide vaccinations are essential for teachers, staff, custodians, cafeteria workers, and bus drivers.  We cannot continue to play politics with children's lives.  We need nationwide vaccine mandates for all schools.
 
Unfortunately, vaccine mandates may not be enough, we also need nationwide mask mandates, especially since children younger than 12 are not eligible for the vaccine yet.  We must take every precaution to safeguard the lives of the children.

 
We need mask and vaccine mandates in all of our schools.
 
As Dr. Jonathan Reiner explained,
 
"The virus is raging in all these children who are unvaccinated, which is why in schools mask mandates are so important"…. "They have no other protection. They're literally sitting ducks."

To keep our children safe and to stop the Delta variant from spreading throughout our schools, let's examine why both mask and vaccine mandates would be better for our children than only one form of protection. 

 
What happens when schools do have mask and vaccine mandates?
 
Let's first look at a school that did not have either mask or vaccine mandates.

• Atlanta: Fulton County schools reported 1,022 positive cases for just the first week of classes.  They did not require masks at first but are now going to have universal masking throughout the school.  So far, they still do not have a vaccine mandate.

 
Will masks alone be enough?

• In Louisville, Kentucky, Jefferson County schools had 485 students test positive for COVID-19 just a mere week and a half after opening, and they required everyone to wear a mask.  Unfortunately, no, they did not require vaccinations, which meant that 2,282 students were sent home to quarantine.

 
What happens when schools require both mask and vaccine?

• Denver Public Schools decided they wanted to do something about COVID-19; therefore, they decided to start the school year in 2021 with a full vaccine mandate and having masks required for everyone.  Yes, there have been some complaints, but so far, they seem to be winning the battle against COVID for the children.  Out of about 90,000 students and 15,000 staff members COVID infections have remained relatively low for the first two weeks of school.  As of September the 2nd, thirty-four staff and eighty-five students have tested positive and only 117 students have needed to be quarantined.

 
The 85 students in Denver is certainly much lower than 485 in Louisville with only masks or the 1,022 in Atlanta with no vaccine and no masks.  No, not perfect, but better. 

We still must control community spread.  Even a fully vaccinated school with everyone wearing masks must contend with the community where the children live.  If the community is not vaccinated and not wearing masks, then the children are still at risk.  Vaccines and masks make a huge difference in controlling COVID-19.  We must bring that degree of safety, not only to the schools, but also to the communities if we are to keep children in school classrooms.
 
I am sure some people are already yelling and screaming that you cannot mandate vaccines, but as Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases stated,
 
"This is not something new….  —we've done this for decades and decades requiring (vaccines for) polio, measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis….  So this would not be something new, requiring vaccinations for children to come to school…. I believe that mandating vaccines for children to appear in school is a good idea…."
  
Mandated vaccinations could be started tomorrow.  We have the vaccine.  As Dr. Fauci says, it’s not something new.  We mandate vaccines all the time.  We have for years.  So, why are we stalling?  Each day that children go to school without mandated vaccines is one more opportunity for a child to get seriously sick from COVID-19.  It is our responsibility as adults to do everything we can to protect children.
 
Yes, I know there are concerns, but ask yourself this question:  Would you rather have your child cross a six-lane highway to get to school or would you prefer that your child cross a city street with a crossing guard?  When you choose not to get vaccinated, you are forcing your child to cross that six-lane highway to try and get an education. 
 
If we mandate COVID-19 vaccine, it will help protect the children.  As Dr. Andi Shane, chief of the division of pediatric infectious diseases at Emory University School of Medicine and hospital epidemiologist at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta explained,
 
“In Georgia, we’ve been back in school for at least three weeks now and in those counties and school districts where there’s masking and vaccination, we’re not seeing many cases…."
 
Yet, as shown earlier in Fulton County, Georgia, where neither masks nor vaccines were mandated, there were 1,022 positive cases of COVID-19 in just the first week of school.
 
Yes, we need to mandate COVID-19 vaccine for students, teachers, and all staff and personnel.  In a recent poll, 59% of Americans supported mandated vaccinations for teachers and 55% supported mandated vaccinations for students age 12 and older. 
 
 
Why do we also need to mandate masks?

We desperately need mask mandates in all schools as long as children younger than 12 are not eligible for COVID-19 vaccine. We may also need to continue masking in schools until we get control over the COVID spike that is raging through most school buildings right now. Masks give us a more immediate barrier to COVID.  Vaccines provide a more effective barrier to COVID-19.
 
Yes, I know that when we talk about mask mandates, we have several governors who are adamantly fighting mask mandates.  My response: we cannot allow politicians to risk children's lives in order for them to grandstand and win elections.  When your child is sick, do you call the governor for medicine or treatment to make your child well?  No, you call a doctor.  The same is true when you want to know how to protect a child’s life from a deadly virus.  You do not call the governor.  Again, you call a doctor.  Children must not ever become political pawns.  Two of my favorite responses here in Texas are:

• The Paris Independent School District included masks in their dress code for 2021.  The school board explained that they were “… concerned about the health and safety of its students and employees.”

 

• At last count, about 58 school districts in Texas are fighting the ban on mask mandates. Thank goodness someone is concerned about the children.

Four of the largest cities in Texas, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, and Houston have all declared mask mandates to protect the children. 
 
David DeMatthews, associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy at The University of Texas at Austin, and David S. Knight at the University of Washington remind each of us that we must think of the needs of others.   
 
“We need to keep in mind that superintendents are responsible for the health and safety of all employees and students, which means individual parental rights cannot override the rights of other parents, children and personnel whose lives may be at greater risk from COVID-19.”

We are not living in a bubble.  What touches you, touches me.  We cannot harp about choice and freedom while children are dying.  We, as adults, should protect the children above our own personal interests.  It is our responsibility to take care of all children.
 
If we want in-person education to work this year, we must enforce mask mandates.
 
Steven Federico, director of pediatrics at Denver Health, one of the main providers for community clinics in the Denver schools said that it is very important to
 
“… maximize the number of in-person learning days, to make up for last year and to support the kids…. The way you do that is vaccinate as many people as possible and mask.”
 
Across the nation this fall, there are thousands of children being sent home to quarantine because they have been exposed to COVID-19.  For many, especially those who are struggling in school, quarantine can reduce their chances for catching up academically.  Remote learning is often difficult or nonexistent.  students, when placed in quarantine, fall further behind in school and some never catch up.
  
The school year has just begun and so far in August, during the past week, we have seen:

• 10,000 students and staff in Hillsborough County, Florida quarantined 
• 1,000 students and staff in Nashville, Tennessee quarantined
• 3,000 students and staff in New Orleans quarantined
• 20,000 students quarantined in Mississippi
• Ware County, Georgia closed its public schools after a "sharp increase" in cases.  
• At least four school districts in Texas have closed because of COVID.   

Those who demand in-class education should also be demanding mask mandates so children have a chance to stay in the classroom.  In Denver, both the teachers and students chose to wear masks.
 
Rob Gould, president of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association union, said with the rise in the Delta variant,  “We have to do masks…. It was a no-brainer."
 
Amir Hall, a senior, said he’d much rather wear a mask and be able to come to school.  The student said he wasn't a big fan of doing remote learning.  The student said that last year some students only came to school a couple of days a week.  Hall said for him, “…wearing masks in class isn't a big deal….I'd rather come…." he said.
 
 
Masks are not harmful.
 
Masks are not psychologically or medically harmful for children to wear all day at school.  Again, do not listen to misinformation and lies.  In my last blog, I presented both research and medical facts to explain why masks are perfectly safe for children to wear at school. 
​
​
Earlier Post: Do Mask Mandates Cause Psychological or Medical Problems for Children?

We have heard a lot over the last year and a half about how dangerous COVID-19 is for the psychological wellness of our children.  As a psychologist, who works with children, I would like to share a psychological principle that is true not only for today during this pandemic, but also for any other day.  If you want to help children be happier and also to have what we call psychological wellness, one way is to help children reach out and do something kind for others.
 
Here, I’ll provide a simple hands-on project that you may use at home if your family is staying home for Labor Day or that you may use in the classroom on Tuesday after Labor Day—or any day.  Making cards to send to a nursing home, or to older relatives, or to anyone who might need a card to brighten their day is an excellent way to teach children how to give kindness to others.  When we share kindness with others, it improves our own mental wellness.

​The only supplies you need are construction paper, scissors, pencil, crayons or markers, and a glue stick.  As you can tell from the pictures, we’re making a spiral pop-up card.  Spirals are easy enough for a 5-year-old to make.  Yet, they can also be challenging enough for high school students, especially if you decide to put three spirals on one card.  Making three spirals takes patience.


​Step 1: Take a sheet of construction paper, any color, fold it in half to make a book.  Set it aside.

Step 2: Next, draw a circle or trace around an object in order to produce a circle.  The circle must fit inside your folded page of construction paper.

Step 3: Cut out the circle.  Do not worry if the edges are not completely round.  The spiral is very forgiving.

Step 4: To make a spiral, you may either cut free hand or use your pencil and draw the spiral first.  Then, cut along the lines you have drawn.  You want the spiral to be thin so it will pop up easily, but not so thin that it breaks.  Small children will need you to draw the spiral on their circle for them.  Then, they can cut along the line that you have drawn and make a spiral.  If you are using this idea for an entire class of students, photocopy a spiral for the children to cut out—use colored photocopy paper if possible.

Don’t let misinformation fool you.  Coronavirus is real.
 
Dr. Jim Versalovic, interim pediatrician-in-chief at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, the nation’s largest pediatric hospital, stated that the number of young people being treated for Covid 19 is at an “all-time high.”  “It is spreading like wildfire across our communities.”  He went on to say that during the last month his hospital staff has diagnosed 200 children with Covid-19 in one day. 
 
Is misinformation harmful?
Because of social media, we are swimming in a sea of misinformation, mistrust, and, in many cases, out-and-out lies.  As a parent or teacher, you must analyze and evaluate every single comment that you read, hear, or see on video. 
 
My advice: turn to the experts. 
 
Look at the source’s credentials.  In all of my writing, I always tell you if someone is an expert in their field.  I also give you a link directly to the source.  Check the credentials; check the links.  Don't take the word of someone who just happens to post on social media.  As I tell my students, a 5-year-old can post on the Internet if they know how to spell the words and work the computer. 
 
Do not believe everything on social media.  For today's post, I want to look at the danger of misinformation.  I want to look at an example of good information about masks on the Internet and an example of bad misinformation about masks on the Internet.  Let's tackle our first question.

 
Our First Question: Do masks cause psychological harm?
 
When we say that something causes psychological harm, this means that it impairs a person’s mental development and well-being. For example, rude, hateful words can cause psychological harm. Bullying can cause psychological harm. Teasing can cause psychological harm. Mass school shootings can cause psychological harm.  Reading failure can cause psychological harm.  That's why I became involved as a psychologist in developing programs to help children overcome reading failure.  My goal is to stop the psychological harm caused by reading failure. So, our question for today is--Do masks cause psychological harm? 
 
What do the experts say?

The experts say that masks do not cause psychological harm. For example, Vanessa LoBue, Ph.D., a developmental psychologist who works with children and specializes in emotion, says that parents often ask whether wearing a face mask all day at school will get in the way of a child's “emotional learning and their ability to understand and respond to the emotions of others.”  Her answer is NO.  As said earlier, this is an example of an expert who knows what she is talking about.  You can trust what she says. 
 
Her article is excellent and easy-to-read, and I encourage you to read the article.
 
We never want to go with just one source, and Dr. LoBue is not the only psychologist giving sound advice about wearing masks.  Dr. Josh Klapow, a licensed clinical psychologist, also says that there is no reason to think that masks cause psychological harm to children. He explains:
 
“There is no evidence that masking up causes psychological damage or problems in children….”
 
Dr. Klapow goes on to say that if you're seeing irritation, upset feelings about wearing a mask, or even distractive behavior, there may be any number of causes.  They may even be modeling the behavior they have seen from the adults around them.  As Klapow explains, most of what drives children’s behavior  “…has everything to do with what adults are modeling.”
 
Another expert, Ashley L. Ruba, Ph.D. studies social interactions with children. She and her colleague, Dr. Seth D. Pollak, Ph. D, who specializes in inclusion and diversity published a research article studying exactly how much children could infer from others when they were wearing a mask.  They are both members of the Department of Psychology and Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin—Madison
 
From their research, Ruba and Pollak did not discover any psychological harms when children wore masks. Their conclusion was:
 
“… masks are unlikely to dramatically impair children’s social interactions….” 
 
They explain their conclusion by stating:
 
“… children’s emotion inferences about faces that wore masks compared to when faces were not covered were still above chance.  …children may reasonably infer whether someone wearing a mask is sad or angry, based on the eye region alone. In addition, children’s accuracy with masked facial configurations did not significantly differ from their accuracy with facial configurations that wore sunglasses—a common accessory that children encounter in their everyday lives. Thus, it appears that masks do not negatively impact children’s emotional inferences…. In sum, children’s ability to infer and respond to another person’s emotion, and their resulting social interactions, may not be dramatically impaired by mask wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic….”
 
So, I have presented four psychologists who are experts in their field and who clearly state that wearing a face mask at school does not cause psychological damage. 
 
We need to remember that school is not the only place where children see faces.  Parents, family, friends, and others who it is safe to be around without a mask also contribute to a child’s ability to interpret facial emotions.  Furthermore, children talk on the telephone without facial cues and yet communicate just fine.  We are not talking about wearing masks forever.  We just want to keep children safe during the pandemic.
 
We should also remember that faces are not the only way for children to interpret emotions.  Voice, body language, and the words you use also express emotion.  As the researchers pointed out, we express emotion with our eyes.   If you are smiling behind a mask, your eyes reflect that smile.
 
The research article from Ruba and Pollak is an excellent example of an actual scientific research article.  I mention this because later I'm going to contrast this with an article that is not; so I want to show readers how to recognize the difference between good and bad research.  Just tacking the name “science” onto an article does not make it scientific or an example of “scientific research.”  Remember, we want to protect our children; therefore, we want to search for the very best information we can find. 

 
Our Second Question:  Do masks cause medical harm?

No, masks do not cause medical harm. We started with two issues—psychological and medical harm. I want to present experts in each area.  On social media, we often hear that masks cause medical harms to children.  There are many people claiming this harm, but again, there is no evidence proving any harms from wearing a mask. To answer this question, let’s turn to a group of medical experts. 
 
First, there is a very good blog called Mask Mythbusters.  This is a current blog, last updated on August 5, 2021.  It is important always to check the date.  Since the Delta variant has changed the threat of coronavirus for children, we need information about what is happening this year, not last year.  The Delta variant has changed the coronavirus pandemic, and we must change with it.  We can no longer say, “well, last year they were okay.”  This fall, we're fighting a new disease, a strand of coronavirus that is easier to catch and easier to transmit to others.

 
Let's look at a good social media site.
 
Healthychildren.org, published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, contains information written by highly qualified people. Dr. Kimberly W. Dickinson, M. D. is a pediatric pulmonary fellow at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.  That means that she works with children who have breathing problems.  She and Dr. Teresa W. Guilbert, M. D., a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Cincinnati and Director of the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Asthma Center have taken the time to answer questions for parents.  Dr. Guilbert has 20 years of experience providing clinical care to children and adolescents with severe asthma.  She also conducts clinical and epidemiologic research (study of diseases) with children.  These are not two people simply posting a blog about their opinions because they have nothing better to do on a Saturday afternoon.  These are medical doctors, experts in the field of working with children and youth who have breathing problems.  Dr. Dickinson and Dr. Guilbert give excellent answers to the questions many parents are asking about masks. 

Let's see what Dr. Dickinson and Dr. Guilbert have to say in "Mask Mythbusters."  They list typical parental question or concern, and then give an answer.  I will only give a brief summary, but I highly encourage you to read the entire page. Here are their answers to key questions: 
 
 
Can wearing a mask make it harder for my child to breathe?
 
“The vast majority of children aged two or older can safely wear face masks for extended periods of time, such as the school day or at child care. This includes children with many medical conditions.”
 
Can masks interfere with a child's lung development?
 
“No, wearing a face mask will not affect your child's lungs from developing normally.”
 
Do masks trap the carbon dioxide that we normally breathe out?
 
“No. There have been false reports that face masks can lead to carbon dioxide poisoning (known as hypercapnia) from re-breathing the air we normally breathe out. But this is not true.”
 
Can masks lead to a weaker immune system by putting the body under stress?
 
“No.” 
 
How do masks prevent the spread of COVID-19?
 
“When worn correctly, face masks create a barrier that reduces the spray of a person's spit and respiratory droplets.”
 
Another question often asked is:

Do Masks Delay Speech and Language Development?

Healthychildren.org also answers this question. 
 
“There is no evidence that use of face masks prevents or delays speech and language development.” 
 
Since wearing a mask all day at school does not cause psychological harm or medical harm, where is all this talk of harm coming from?  There are many misinformed sources, but I want to focus on just one to make my point. 
 
 
An Example of a Bad Research Site
 
Let’s look at how poor research could misinform people
 
Writing for Principia Scientific International on February 15, 2021, Reagan Hall stated:  “New Study Finds Covid Masks Harm Children’s Physical And Mental Health.”
 
Yet, if you go to this new study that she claims provides evidence of these harms, you will quickly find that she has distorted the evidence.  Let’s go to the actual research article that she is talking about.
 
First, the title of the research article is:  “Corona Children Studies "Co-Ki": First Results of A Germany-Wide Registry On Mouth And Nose Covering (Mask) In Children.”
 
Notice the difference between the two titles.  Ms. Hall claims the study found masks to be harmful.  The authors of the study state that this is simply an opinion survey.  A list of opinions is very different from actual scientific proof.
 
How was this study distorted and misinterpreted?

If we look at the actual article that Reagan Hall cites, the second thing that we must notice is that this is not a peer-reviewed published article.  The previous cited study from Ruba and Pollak was peer reviewed.  Peer review means that experts have examined the research and determined that the study provides a correct analysis of the situation being studied.  This is important for parents, teachers, and the general community.  If you are not a trained researcher, reading only peer reviewed articles will ensure that you are reading quality material and not just a bunch of opinions that may or may not be true.  For example, look what the editors say in bold print, not just once but in two separate places at the top of the article that Ms. Hall cites: 
 
“This is a preprint, a preliminary version of a manuscript that has not completed peer review at a journal…. The posting of a preprint on this server should not be interpreted as an endorsement of its validity or suitability for dissemination as established information or for guiding clinical practice.”
 
“Due to multiple limitations, this study cannot demonstrate a causal relationship between mask wearing and the reported adverse effects in children.”
 
In other words, this is a list of complaints by parents who do not like masks, but the survey cannot be considered scientific proof because the study has too many problems or limitations.
 
What are research limitations?
 
When you use the word limitations in a scientific study, it means that there were aspects of the research that keep the study from making a statement that would be true for all people.  The results are only true for the specific individuals who responded to the survey. 
 
What problems did the editors find in this study?

• The survey was not “equally accessible” to all groups.  This means that only certain people responded to the survey; therefore, the results of the survey cannot be considered true of everyone.  It is just the opinions of a few people.
• There was no control group.  This causes the study to be biased.  In other words, the survey did not ask questions of parents with children who were not wearing masks to see if they also were sleepy or drowsy in the afternoon at school.  I have frequently worked with children who are drowsy or sleepy in the afternoon, even before the coronavirus ever existed.
• The reports were all made by parents, not the children.  The report does not record the parents not making a complaint.  In other words, if I have a negative opinion about masks and you are doing a survey, then I will be more likely to respond and tell you that I do not like masks than someone who does not object to masks.  Trust me, it’s human nature, we are always eager to complain.

 
Why is this important?
 
Okay, you may be saying, I don’t care about research; I just want to know are the problems real. Are these actual problems I should be concerned about with my child?  There is absolutely no scientific proof that masks cause any of the problems described in this article and certainly not psychological harm.  Look at what the authors of the article even said in their report:
 
“It is very important to us that our results do not lead to parents developing a fundamentally negative opinion of mask-wearing among children. Many children and adolescents are grateful that they can continue to attend school … and would like adults to have a positive opinion about the masks, especially since the type of mask worn can usually be chosen.”
 
So, even the study’s authors do not claim that their study shows definite harms from wearing masks.  Ms. Hall has completely and totally distorted what the report says.

 
Why is it dangerous when this type of misrepresentation of the truth appears on the Internet?
 
 This study is being used by many people--misinterpreted yes--but used as an example of “scientific research” that says masks are harmful.  There is absolutely no proof that masks cause problems of any kind.
 
You may be saying, okay, so this is a weak study that has led to a harmful article written by Reagan Hall.  Why are you so riled up about this particular article?  Well, there are zillions of weak studies popping up on the Internet every single day and they prove absolutely nothing.  Why is Reagan Hall’s article so dangerous?  Because of two statements made at the end of the article:
 
“Please DONATE TODAY To Help Our Non-Profit Mission To Defend The Scientific Method.”
“Please Donate Below To Support Our Ongoing Work To Expose The Lies About COVID19.”

1. Real scientists do not put pleas for donations at the end of their opinion statements.  Scientists seek financial support like everyone else, but they usually apply for grants. They do not beg for donations on the Internet.
2. The research article that she cites does not properly use the scientific method; therefore, it cannot be called scientific research.  If this is Ms. Hall’s interpretation of scientific research and proper use of the scientific method, I suggest you stay away from her work.
3. Ms. Hall seeks donations “to expose the lies about Covid 19.”  Yet, her very article distorted, misrepresented, and to use her word, “lied” about the research she cited.  I personally plan to stay far away from Ms. Hall and her Principia Scientific International.  As a psychologist and research scientist myself, I do not appreciate people using the name “science” to try and make their opinions sound legitimate when they are not.

  
Listen to the experts, not the gossip on social media. 

Yes, there is actually good information available to you through social media, but you have to know where to look and you must evaluate what you read.  Here on my blog, I have always tried to give you the best research that I can find.  As a research psychologist, I have been trained to evaluate the quality of a research article.  I strive to give you the benefit of my training whenever I write.  For example, each of the psychologists listed above can be found on social media. There are also excellent, easy to read, scientific-based websites that offer factual information for parents and teachers.  These are sites you can turn to on your own.  For the health and safety of children, try to find the best, truthful information possible. 

 
Why do we need masks mandates in schools?
 
If you are reading news articles, reports or even research from 2020, the information you are reading is no longer correct.  The Delta variant has changed the coronavirus that children are facing today.  You can no longer say that “children are not really affected,” because yes, children are definitely getting sick and even dying from the Delta variant.
 
At present, no scientific proof shows masks cause harms when children wear them at school.  We do have rock-solid evidence that children are catching coronavirus (because of the Delta variant) in far greater numbers than last year.  Children ages 12 and under are not yet eligible for the vaccine.  The only protection these children have is for everyone, teachers, staff, parents, helpers, and all students to wear masks all day at school. 
 
Dr. Jim Versalovic, interim pediatrician- in-chief at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, the nation’s largest pediatric hospital, stated that the number of young people being treated for Covid 19 is at an “all-time high.”  “It is spreading like wildfire across our communities.”  He went on to say that during the last month his hospital staff has diagnosed 200 children with Covid-19 in one day. 
  
As several experts have warned, we need to “hit the reset button.”  We need to realize that we are dealing with a new strand of the virus.  We need to stop listening to “lies.”  We need to turn to the experts, listen to “true facts” not angry threats and made-up opinions.  The children are depending on adults to help keep them safe.  We must not play politics with children’s lives.  We must act like adults and make wise, informed, life-saving decisions.
 
The experts are saying:
​

• “After declining in early summer, child cases have ‘steadily increased’ since the beginning of July. From August 5 to August 12, a total of 121,427 child cases were reported….” (from the American Academy of Pediatrics)

 

• "This Delta variant is just so incredibly contagious that lots of the kids are getting exposed, getting infected. And some of them are getting really quite ill in the hospital, in intensive care units. And sadly, we are seeing kids die from this."  (Virus expert Dr. Francis Collins)

 

• “… with the highly contagious delta variant spreading across the U.S., children are filling hospital intensive care beds instead of classrooms in record numbers, more even than at the height of the pandemic.”  (AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner) 

 

• "More than 400 children have died of COVID-19. And right now we have almost 2,000 kids in the hospital. Many of them in ICU, some of them under the age of four. So anybody who tries to tell you, 'Well, don't worry about the kids. That virus won't really bother them.' That's not the evidence. And especially with Delta being so contagious kids are very seriously at risk and it's up to all of us to do everything we can to protect them…."  (Dr. Francis Collins) 

 
 
The evidence says that children are definitely in danger with the Delta variant.  With schools opening every day, we need to do everything we can to protect our children.  We need vaccine mandates for everyone who is eligible at school, staff included, even the custodian and bus driver.  We also need mask mandates.  We need everyone in the school building, even if you’re just visiting, wearing a mask.
 
Dr. Mark Kline, physician-in-chief of Children’s Hospital New Orleans, points out that the Delta variant has completely changed the precautions that we need to take to keep children safe:
 
 
“This virus that we’re dealing with now is a game changer, and it’s just so easily transmitted from person-to-person that this could truly catalyze an explosion of cases across the region….  I think bringing together large numbers of children, congregating them in classrooms with masks being optional — or worse yet even, forbidden — is just a formula for disaster….” (Dr. Mark Kline of Children's Hospital New Orleans). 

“This is not your grandfather’s COVID…. This Delta variant is an entirely new and unexpected challenge,” says Dr. Mark Kline, the physician-in-chief at Children’s Hospital in New Orleans. 
 
Dr. Peter Hotez, Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, echoed Dr. Kline’s concern and went one step further by saying,

“… schools act as an accelerant, you should assume we’re going to see pediatric intensive care units all across the South completely overwhelmed and even a possibility of small tent cities of sick adolescents and kids.”
​
As both Dr. Hotez and Dr. Kline stated, the Delta variant is something different than we have ever seen before with Covid.  Instead of attacking the nursing homes, Delta seems to be attacking young people and schools, and those too young to be vaccinated are especially at risk.  We cannot use last year’s data that says children are not at-risk for Covid nor can we use last year’s data showing that children did not catch Covid.  If you are not reading articles from July or August 2021, you are not keeping up with what is happening right now.   Last year’s ideas are no longer valid for school children.  Again, as Dr. Klein so clearly stated, “This is not your grandfather’s COVID….”  We are fighting something completely unlike last year’s Covid, and Delta seems to be attacking young people as Covid has never attacked children before.
 
Earlier Post: Should Children Wear Masks All Day in School? 

What Are the Facts? 

No, I am not exaggerating or being overly dramatic.  Let’s look at the facts. 

• “The number of children contracting Covid-19 [in Florida] has increased fivefold since the end of June, with a “substantial” 84% jump in the last week alone, ….  Florida currently leads the nation in kids hospitalized for Covid-19, with 32 pediatric hospitalizations per day between July 24 and 30…American Academy of Pediatrics recorded almost 72,000 new cases of Covid-19 among children from July 22-29….”

 
An August 9, 2021, report summarized the results for children in other states. The virus is ripping through Arkansas:

• “Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock had 23 patients under 18 admitted to its system last week. Ten were in the ICU and five were on ventilators.”

Missouri is also suffering:

• “St. Louis Children’s Hospital in Missouri saw 13 kids come to the ER for Covid in the last week of July, and then it saw 20 who needed beds in the first week of August.”

 
And so is my home state of Texas:

• “At Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, Covid positivity rates have risen from around 3 percent to above 10 percent among kids. The number of hospitalized children was in the single digits several weeks ago but rose to more than 30 last week.”

Louisiana is in trouble:

• Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said Friday that there are 13 children hospitalized with Covid at Children’s Hospital New Orleans, including six under the age of 2. Four children are in the ICU, including a 3-month-old boy, a 23-month-old girl, an 8-year-old girl and a 17-year-old boy.

 
Public schools this fall are going to be a major breeding ground for the Delta variant, or as Dr. Hotez explains:
 
"If your adolescent kid is unvaccinated, you should assume there’s a high likelihood that that child is going to get COVID.”

Dr. Hotez continued,

“And we haven’t even gotten to the ‘long COVID’ discussion around young people and what that means for their long-term cognitive health.”
 
Yes, we are once again discussing whether or not we should send children to school for in class instruction.  I will say that the majority of our concern is for children 12 years and under, those who are not eligible to receive a vaccine yet.  You may be saying, but “children need an education.”  I totally agree, but …
 
You can’t educate children if they’re dead.
 
So, what should we do?

 
Make Sure That You Are Vaccinated
 
First, anyone and everyone who is eligible for the vaccine should immediately go and be vaccinated.  We should definitely have mandates for teachers, staff, students who are eligible, and everyone who walks into a school building.  These mandates should require that every person eligible be vaccinated, but the vaccine may not be enough for the Delta variant.  We are seeing some breakthroughs with even fully-vaccinated individuals.  Therefore, we must do more to safeguard our children.  Before you complain that mandatory vaccinations are contrary to personal freedoms, you should remember that we already require vaccinations for students to go to school and have for many years.  Mandatory vaccinations are not unconstitutional nor do they violate anyone’s freedom.
 
Nicole Carroll, editor-in-chief of USA Today, presents a very interesting point of view on why people do not get vaccinated.  She breaks down the arguments many people use for not getting vaccinated and answers them one by one.  As she states, many find it hard to know who to believe and do not trust the medical experts when the internet is plastered end-to-end with incorrect information.  Carroll claims the main reason the unvaccinated still refuse the vaccine is “trust.”  Others have stated “fear” is the reason many refuse the vaccine.  If you are still not vaccinated, I suggest you look at this article. It’s easy to read and well written. 
 
 
Wear a Mask
 
Wearing a mask is probably the second most important safety measure that we can implement in schools, especially since the Delta variant does seem to break through the vaccine some of the time.  Every single person in a school should be wearing a mask all day long.  That does not include a “mask break” or an “in the office” exclusion from wearing a mask.  If you are in the school building, you need to wear a mask from the minute you enter the building until the time you leave the building.  Yes, I do understand that students need to take the mask off to eat lunch.  I’m hopeful that we will have a vaccine for 12 years and younger before winter arrives and we must move all lunch activities indoors.  For now, children can easily sit outside and eat their lunch.  They probably will enjoy it more than sitting in the cafeteria during lunch time.
 
Project Hope, The People-to-People Health Foundation published a study by Wei Lyu and George L. Wehby from the University of Iowa that clearly demonstrated that:
 
“… mandating the use of face masks in public had a greater decline in daily COVID-19 growth rates after issuing these mandates compared with states that did not issue mandates …. as a result of the implementation of these mandates, more than 200,000 COVID-19 cases were averted ….  The findings suggest that requiring face mask use in public could help in mitigating the spread of COVID-19.”

 
Social Distancing and Handwashing Are Also Important

Now, more than ever, we must do whatever we can to protect the children and stop the spread of the Delta variant.  Wearing face masks will help, but we need more.  The National Academy of Sciences recently reported a study that concluded:
 
“… public mask wearing is most effective at reducing spread of the virus when compliance is high. We recommend that mask use requirements are implemented by governments, or, when governments do not, by organizations that provide public-facing services. When used in conjunction with widespread testing, contact tracing, quarantining of anyone that may be infected, hand washing, and physical distancing, face masks are a valuable tool to reduce community transmission. All of these measures, … have the potential to reduce the number of infections.”
 
For children 12 years and younger, mask and social distancing are about all we have to offer, unless we teach children 12 years and younger online this fall until the vaccine is available for them.  Yes, I can hear people yelling we must put students back in the classroom.  I, for one, prefer teaching in a group rather than teaching online. However, I have always said we must put children’s safety first.  My reading clinic remains closed this fall because I work with children 12 years and younger.  It is simply not safe for us to work together in a group setting; therefore, I will continue to work online.  For those who claim that education losses can never be overcome, I often work with children who are three and four years behind their age level in reading.  Through my reading clinic, I have brought children up four grade levels in reading in one year.  Yes, we can overcome learning losses, but we cannot replace the children who die from coronavirus. 
 
Therefore, since the vaccine and wearing a mask have been proven to help prevent Covid-19, shouldn’t you shoulder the inconvenience of wearing a mask?  Help save a child’s life. Set your political beliefs aside. Get vaccinated and wear a mask—for the children.
 
Save the Children

As another school year draws near, the Internet and the news are once again buzzing with angry tirades over whether children should or should not wear masks at school this year. Considering that we're still in the middle of a pandemic, and, as of last month, in the midst of a major surge from the delta variant, the answer should be obvious.  Yes, all students, teachers, and staff, even the custodian, should wear masks all day long in school.
​
It's like teaching a child to cross the street. Do parents and teachers stand on the curb and tell children to run across the street while cars are flying by from both directions?  No.  Well, that's exactly what you're doing when you send children to school with no masks, no social distancing, and no vaccine.  If you require vaccines at school for everyone who is eligible, then you reduce the traffic down to one lane.  The child only has to run across in front of one lane of oncoming cars.  If you require everyone at school to wear a mask and socially distance, then you have reduced the number of cars and the danger even more.  You haven’t eliminated the danger, but you have given the children a chance to survive and stay healthy.  No one, not even the most blatant politician, would stand up and advocate that we should send children out to cross busy highways with traffic going in both directions, so why are they saying that we should send children to school to combat the delta variant of coronavirus with absolutely no protection?  Our children deserve better from the adults who should be protecting them.
 
All students, teachers, and staff should wear masks this fall.
Wait, you may be saying:  “I thought it was over.  I heard we didn't need to wear mask anymore.  Why are they changing their minds now?  This isn't fair.  I'm tired of wearing a mask.”  Wrong. 
 
The coronavirus pandemic is far from being over. 
In fact, Delta is a totally new strain of the virus that is even more deadly, easier to catch, and also easier to spread to others.  So, in many ways it is actually more dangerous to send children back to school this year than it was last year. 
(Let me say, that I think children who are too young to receive a vaccine should actually not be in classrooms this fall.  We should wait until the vaccine is available, but I'm certain that will not happen.  Therefore, we should at least provide what little bit of protection that a mask offers.)
 
Are the dangers to children new this year?
No, the dangers are not new, but they may be worse.  Children have been catching Covid-19 all along. “More than 4.1 million children have been diagnosed with Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic ….” but over the past two weeks with the emergence of the delta variant, the number of children with Covid-19 has simply “exploded.” As Dr. Mark Kline, hospital physician-in-chief explained,
  
"We are seeing children fall ill that we just simply didn't see in the first year of the pandemic before the delta variant came along … over the past two weeks — from zero to 20 … Because the delta variant is so contagious … the increase in cases clearly shows the virus's potential, even in young, otherwise healthy children.”
 
Yes, I understand, we are still going to send children to school anyway, no matter how risky it is.   As one reporter stated, no matter how dangerous the delta variant may be, in some states “low in-person enrollment” can cause school funding to be cut; therefore, on-line teaching options have been removed and schools are demanding that students return to in-class instruction.
 
So, evidently, politicians actually will send children out to cross the highway with cars coming from both directions.  Yes, society will even sacrifice the health and safety of children in the name of politics.
 
More and More Doctors are Calling for Masks
Even the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is recommending that everyone over the age of two wear a mask when returning to school this fall, regardless of their vaccination status.  They went on to say that even teachers and staff should wear masks.

“The AAP said universal masking is necessary because much of the student population is not vaccinated, and it's hard for schools to determine who is as new variants emerge that might spread more easily among children.”
 
Even though mask mandates are not popular with students, parents, teachers, and certainly not politicians, it is what we need to do. Masks are essential in schools this fall, and one small thing that we can do to safeguard the life and health of the children.
 
As Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, said,
“The virus doesn't care that we're sick of masks … to the degree that we can squash that [the delta virus] by doing something that maybe is a little uncomfortable, a little inconvenient ... if it looks like it's going to help, put the mask back on …. "

As fall grows near, many schools, and even some parents, are proposing that children should redo a school year because of the coronavirus pandemic.  These advocates say that children lost too much learning from either ineffective online instruction or because they were not consistently sitting in the classroom.  As one parent asked, “should my child redo 3rd grade?”
 
My response is--never. 
​
 

Why is redoing a school year bad for students?
First, “redo” is just another word for retention.  Redoing the school year is the same as saying that the child should be retained a grade in school. 
 
Second, having children redo a year will cause the same problems that retention does.  The Center for Development and Learning reviewed 40 years of research on the effectiveness of retention or having a student repeat a grade in school.  Research proves that retention does not work.  In their summary statement, the Center for Development and Learning stated the following problems: 
​

• “Most children do not ‘catch up’ when held back.
• “Although some retained students do better at first, these children often fall behind again in later grades.
• “Retention is one of the most powerful predictors of high school dropout; holding a child back twice makes dropping out of school 90% certain.”

 
A third concern is the psychological damage that retention causes.  Paula Johnson with the Intercultural Development Research Association wrote a full report on the effects of retention and stated that “… in-grade retention has numerous health and emotional risks for elementary school children….  Students who are retained in middle or high school also face higher risks of emotional distress, tobacco use, alcohol use, drug abuse, driving while drinking, early onset of sexual activity, suicidal intentions, and violent behaviors.”  
 
Retention simply doesn’t work.  Retention doesn’t help students learn.
Redoing a grade, even during a pandemic, will create the same problems and have the same results as retaining a student in the same grade during a normal year.  Saying “redo” in place of “retention” does not change the harms that retention causes.
 
When children repeat a year, their education never recovers.  Megan Andrew, a sociologist from the University of Notre Dame, conducted a study where she found that students who were retained a grade in between kindergarten and 5th grade were 60% less likely to graduate from high school than those who had similar grades but were not retained.
 
One of her study’s unique features is that she compared the students who were retained with the students who were also failing but not retained.  She studied more than 37,000 students across the United States and matched students of similar family backgrounds, IQs, and cognitive skills.
 
Retention failed to help these students, and the list of problems created by retention goes on and on. 
 
According to Grade Retention Facts, retaining a student does not help the student catch up in school. Unfortunately, redoing a grade may cause a student to do worse in school.
Grade Retention Facts also states that retained students consider grade retention as a more stressful event than the death of a parent
 
Grade Retention Facts is a concise, straightforward explanation, strongly supported by research evidence.  It explains the myth—the common misinformation that you will hear—and the facts of what really happens from grade retention.  In short, it says that grade retention is both academically ineffective (doesn’t work) and harmful to the student.  I encourage you to sit down, read, and think about the true results of retention as highlighted on this handout.

 
So, why do we think that “redoing” a year after the pandemic will be any more successful than retention has been?
I have no idea, but the Internet is buzzing with both parents and schools demanding that students redo last year.  Redo is just continuing the harmful retention process under a new disguise.  It's called “redo,” but “redo” is actually still retaining a child a grade in school—a harmful substitution for when classroom education practices fail. I am also equally opposed to simply “socially promoting” students on to the next grade.  Neither method works.  Research has shown both methods to be total failures. 
 
 
What should we do? 
Many students have fallen behind during the coronavirus pandemic.  Should these students be retained or required to “redo” the grade?  No! 
 
I've had the pleasure of working with a student since the coronavirus lockdown. This student was a full year behind, although the student had attended class every single day up till the lockdown.  What happened?  Ineffective teaching methods in the classroom.  Did this student need to redo a year?  No.  I started right in with the next grade, and I retaught the curriculum using a totally different teaching method.  Even with online teaching, this student was able to catch up and move ahead.  This student is now “caught up” and at age level.  No retention, no redo, just effective teaching using methods that have been proven to work. The method that I use is vowel clustering.

 
Reading education is central to making up lost ground
Researchers state that reading skills suffer the most when students are retained:
 
“The most notable academic deficit for retained students is in reading…. Students who are unprepared in reading have a 15% chance of succeeding in math and a 1% chance of succeeding in science, while students who are good readers have a 67% chance of succeeding in math and a 32% chance in science.”  
 
Although reading is where children fall down the most when they miss a year, the problem is not just missed days in the classroom because of the pandemic.  The real problem is the methods that we use to teach reading.  Retention or redoing a grade will not correct poor teaching methods. Let's go back and look at reading scores before the pandemic.  We were already in trouble in reading before Covid-19. 

Please read the statistics carefully, yes, the charts show that more than 60% of students across the nation cannot read at grade level in 4th, 8th, and 12th grade.  The curriculum responsible for these devastating reading scores combines phonics, whole language, and balanced literacy. 
 
Keep in mind that all of these test scores were from classroom instruction before COVID-19.  These scores reflect teaching methods used in classrooms before the coronavirus pandemic. 

 
So, what should we do?  Teach reading correctly, using a teaching method that actually works.
At my reading clinic, many of the children who I work with have been retained multiple times before they come to my clinic, some even three times.  One 2nd grader who was sent to my reading clinic had been retained twice--once in kindergarten and a second time in first grade.  Then, the student was “passed on” to second grade.  The student was 9 years old and sent to my reading clinic in the middle of the year.  The school was already saying that the student would most likely be retained again in 2nd grade.  It's true the student couldn't read, not even at the pre- kindergarten level.  Retaining the student twice, one-on-one tutoring in phonics, and balanced literacy in the classroom did not help the student learn to read—not even a little bit.  Yet, four months after the student was enrolled at my reading clinic, the student began to read.  Why was the student now able to read when everything else had failed?  Because I use vowel clustering.  Vowel Clustering has been proven to work with struggling, at-risk, and failing students where retention has failed. ​

Several parents have asked me, "How important is it for my child to read this summer? After all, they'll be back in school before you know it.  It’s been a hard year, summer’s short, couldn’t they just take the summer off this year?” ​

Yes, it is vital for your child to read over the summer.  Children should never just take the summer off from reading.  Everyone should read. Most parents sit and read to children when the child is too young to read, but do you still sit and read with your child when they are older?  Do you listen to your child read, or do you just send them off to read alone?  Reading should be a family activity every single day. 
 
Stop and ask yourself:  What do my children see me doing?  Do my children see me watching TV or reading a book? Do my children see me on my phone or reading a book?  Children mimic and learn from your actions.
 
Why Is It Important For Children to Read over the Summer?
 
Research from over 7,500 school districts and 18 million students has shown that 52% of students lose an average of 39% of their total school year gains during the summer months.  That’s half of the students across the United States, and they're losing about 1/3 of what they learned during the school year.  The research goes on to explain that students who do not read over the summer will only retain approximately 70% of what they learned in the classroom during the normal school year. So yes, reading over the summer is extremely important and vital to every single child's education, especially this year after the erratic educational year children have experienced.
 
What Should My Child Read?
 
Let your children choose reading material, but do not be afraid to challenge them to try something new. One of the best ways to encourage your child to read something new and different is for the two of you to sit down and read it together. Make summer reading a time to explore new and different ideas, or even to read about different places in the world. If you get tired of being in the house, read outside.  Make reading a fun time, and remember, the library is free. 
 
The first step is to keep the brain engaged and active. Watching TV does not keep the brain engaged or active. Sorry.  Yes, your brain is thinking while you're watching TV, but it is not focusing on learning or understanding new words.  Expanding one's vocabulary is essential to learning.  Yes, the brain is also working while you're playing video games, but the brain is not learning new vocabulary words while you're playing video games.  
 
Emphasize vocabulary building during summer reading.  Sit and read together, challenging children to read something new, maybe something a bit harder than what they usually read.  Don't just assume your child is reading just because you hand the child the book. Instead, sit down and read with your child.  Vocabulary is what enables us to comprehend. If a child does not understand the meaning of the words that they are reading, they cannot understand what the book is saying.  We learn new words through reading. 
 
Do not simply point to a word and tell the child the word.  Break the word down and learn the word.  At my reading clinic, we call it the 4-steps: 

• (Step 1) always say the letter sounds and spell the word,
• (Step 2) give a definition,
• (Step 3) use the word in a sentence, and
• (Step 4) write the word correctly.

Read More: Four Steps to Learn a New Word

Read More: Hands-On Learning


As we read, we completely engage the brain in learning new words and what they mean. As we read, we learn how the words apply to what we’re reading. Then, and only, then are we actually comprehending.

Make reading fun.  Discover something new or explore a special interest. Use hands-on learning techniques. 

This becomes a teaching tool. We can read about each tree and then make the tree. At my reading clinic, I provide patterns and step-by-step directions to help the children make trees.  Reading and following step-by-step directions helps children improve reading comprehension skills. 

There are seven different trees in the model displayed at the top of the page.​​

You can also emphasize animals.  You can find free clip art pictures of animals from the Amazon rainforest, have the child color each animal, add them to your rainforest, and then read and learn about each animal. You don't need to go out and buy special materials.  The rainforest model was made out of construction paper and recyclable materials lying around the house. The only thing that I bought was green yarn.  ​

​Read with your child each and every day.  No matter how busy you are, you have time to sit down and read a book with your child.  Make it a part of your daily schedule.  Have a set time the two of you can sit down and read together.  Be consistent and read at the same time every day (even on vacation).  Reading together is just as important as brushing your teeth.  Research shows that summer reading is the best way to avoid the “summer slide" (losing gains over the summer).

• How many books have you and your child read together this summer? 
• ​Why not start today?  The local library is free. 

Parents have been asking lately:  Do you think it is possible for my child to make up everything they lost during the coronavirus pandemic?  My answer is a definite yes, if we use the correct teaching methods.  Let me give an example to explain.
 
A 15-year-old high school freshman was brought to my reading clinic one year. She tested at the pre-kindergarten level in reading.  She knew the consonant sounds, but none of the vowel sounds.  She could not even read or recognize words with the short a vowel sound, such as cat or can.  Nor could she read the word the.  It took me 3½ years, but I taught her to read using vowel clustering.  Her school used balanced literacy and one-on-one phonics tutoring.  She had failed for nine straight years with systematic phonics tutoring.  As I’ve said many times, phonics simply does not work for all students.  The school said she would never be able to learn to read.  Yet, she did learn, and she was very excited to be able to read. 
 
If changing teaching methods can make up for 9 years of learning loss or failure, then yes, we can help each and every student who is struggling after the coronavirus pandemic.  We can help students learn to read, but to do so, we must change the way we teach struggling students.
 
How Should We Start? 
Many well-intentioned educators are saying that we should “stick with grade level curriculum.”  They are saying, regardless how far behind or confused your students are, teach what is assigned for that grade level.  I say, wrong.  Such a policy will only cause more failure.  Look at the example of our 15-year-old.  If I had said that she is 15 years old and she is a freshman in high school; therefore, I must teach her freshman high school reading material, she would never have learned to read.  She had failed for nine straight years; her failure was deeply ingrained. She did not believe she would ever learn to read.  No, we must start where the confusion or failure begins.  If the student is 15 years old and cannot read at the pre-kindergarten level—does not know even simple vowel sounds—then, obviously, I have to teach that student at the pre-kindergarten level, no matter her age or grade in school.
 
The same is true with students returning to the classroom after the coronavirus pandemic. We cannot teach them at the level they should be at in school; instead, we must teach them at the skill level they possess when they return to the classroom.  If there are fourth-graders reading at the first grade level, then we must begin to rebuild by teaching them at the first grade level. Using this method, I really have had students move up four grade levels in reading in one school year.  When it comes to reading, you cannot skip around. The student must learn one step at a time.  This is how we teach with vowel clustering.
 
Why Did Phonics Not Work?
As Dr. Mark Seidenberg states in his book, Language at the Speed of Sight:  How We Read, Why so Many Can’t, and What Can Be Done About It, the reason phonics did not work for my 15-year-old student and for many students is that it does not connect with oral speech.  Vowel clustering works directly with the oral language system.  This is why we have been so successful.
 
Earlier Post: Reading Wars and How Should We Teach Children to Read? 

Earlier Post: Reading Wars Are Over! Who Won? Certainly Not the Students

As Dr. Seidenberg goes on to explain, real scientific research has had little effect on how reading is being taught in the classroom.  If we simply return students to the classroom and do not change how we teach reading, reading failure will continue.  At present, the Nation’s Report Card shows that 65% of fourth graders tested below grade level when they took the test in 2019. These test scores were before the coronavirus pandemic.
  
Yes, we have a problem in reading education, and that problem is only going to get worse.  The only way we can get rid of reading failure is to change how we teach children to read.  Phonics simply does not work for struggling students.  As Dr. Jeffrey S. Bowers explains “the strength of evidence for phonics has been exaggerated…. the evidence for phonics is weak.” 
 
So, if phonics does not work for struggling at-risk students, what should we do?  I have been successful using vowel clustering with failing and struggling students. Eight years of research document my success.
 
Will All of The Education Problems Be Solved Just by Sending Children Back into the Classroom? 
No, we also need to be careful about how we reopen schools.  Chad Aldeman, a policy director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, encourages us to look back at history.  He states that past disasters, especially the 1918 pandemic, should teach us the path that we should follow. 

“Without a plan for recovery focused on students’ needs, we’ll be condemning a generation of children to worse academic and economic outcomes throughout their life. Looking back in time, the children born during the 1918 flu pandemic had lower educational attainment, increased rates of physical disability, lower income and a greater reliance on government welfare. With hindsight, we have an opportunity to learn from the evidence of past disasters and take action now to make sure the same results don’t happen again.”

Exactly what are the reading wars?  The reading wars are an ongoing feud between phonics and whole language.  Phonics is the older of the two teaching methods. Phonics started back in 1690 with the New England Primer.  Then, as now, problems cropped up, which led to the introduction of “whole-word” or the “look-say” teaching method.  The war was on. 

​In the 1960’s, educational theory swung back toward phonics, but then in the 1980’s, it turned back toward “whole-word,” which was quickly becoming known as “whole language.”  In 2000, the National Reading Panel (NRP) was organized, supposedly to solve the question of which method was better.  That was 21 years ago, and yet the battle rages on.  The result of the NRP study was actually that most schools today have converted to balanced literacy—a combination of phonics and whole language.  Balanced literacy has not proven to be any more successful than phonics or whole language.
 
Everyone claims that balanced literacy is new, but I myself learned back in the 50’s from a combination of phonics and the Dick and Jane readers (classified as whole language).  Yes, they were awful.  Unfortunately though, many students did not learn to read under that system in the 50’s.  As one man explained to me, “they put me in a pullout phonics program every year from first grade on.  It didn’t do any good.  I still can’t read.”

 
Reading failure Is a Long-Standing Problem in the United States

If we look at the Nation’s Report Card, we can quickly tell why the reading war continues.  As these three pie charts illustrate (based on data from the 2019 Nation’s Report Card), reading failure is at an all-time high. 

For more of my research comparing the effectiveness of vowel clustering and phonics, see Chapter 3 of my 2019 book, After-School Programming and Intrinsic Motivation

The fact that phonics has problems is not news.  Over the years, numerous phonics advocates have also warned about the shortcomings of phonics.  In 2001, Linnea C. Ehri, a strong phonics supporter, admitted that phonics would “not help low achieving readers.”  Jeanne Sternlicht Chall, as far back as 1967, warned that phonics would not work for all students.  So yes, Fletcher is correct: many enthusiastic newspaper reporters, Internet bloggers, and even some researchers have exaggerated and overstated the case for the effectiveness of phonics.  Phonics simply does not work for many students, especially struggling students.  The students who need help the most.

 
Earlier Post: Why Does Phonics Education Fail? 

 
Instead of fighting over phonics and whole language, we need a totally new method for teaching struggling students how to read.
 
It is time to stop bickering and find a new teaching method.  No, balanced literacy is not the answer either.  We need a new teaching method that helps students link reading with the oral language system.
 
Mark Seidenberg clearly states in his book, Language at the Speed of Sight:  How We Read, Why so Many Can’t, and What Can Be Done About It, that  the way we teach reading is “a significant part of the literacy problem.”
  
Seidenberg goes on to point out three main problems with our present teaching methods

• current teaching practices are based on outdated assumptions.
• true scientific research in reading has had very little effect on how reading is taught in the classroom.
• new neurobiological brain research in reading is being totally ignored by today’s educators.

 
Dr. Seidenberg goes on to point out that we have decades of research showing that the only effective way to teach children to read is to teach skills that connect reading with oral speech.  So, why are we arguing over phonics and whole language when neither of those methods connect to oral speech? 
 
We’ll talk more about the importance of the oral language system for learning to read next time, but for now I want to close with a quote from Dr. Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for over 35 years.  Dr. Fauci was speaking about scientific research and opinions in reference to the coronavirus pandemic, but I believe that his comment about research and opinions is equally valid for the reading wars. 
 
“People’s opinions are a fact of life.  What gets, um, I think troublesome, is when people develop their own set of facts.  Facts don’t change.  So you have a different opinion, but facts are consistent.  That’s the problem.”

As the pie chart shows, 65% of 4th graders tested below grade level when they took the 2019 reading test.  Indeed, only 35% of 4th graders could read at or above the 4th grade level when tested in 2019.  Students are failing in reading all across the nation.  Scores did not improve in 8th or 12th grade either.

Please note that all of these test scores were from classroom instruction before Covid-19.  The scores came before the lockdown, before hybrid teaching, before disaster struck.  
 
These scores show that more than half the students in every grade are struggling or even failing in reading.  Reading failure is not a new problem.  These students are often classified as “low performing” or “low achieving” readers.  Although I do not like to place labels on children, knowing how reading specialists classify students does help us make comparisons. 

• for 8th grade only 34% could read at or above grade level
• 12th grade only 37% could read at or above grade level

  
Reading Failure

The Nation’s Report Card shows that reading failure is a long-standing problem. As Peggy Carr from the assessments division for the National Center for Educational Statistics (NAEP) explains:
 
"Since the first reading assessment in 1992, there’s been no growth for the lowest performing students in either fourth or eighth grade….  Our students struggling the most with reading are where they were nearly 30 years ago.”  
 
During these 30 years, whole language, phonics, and even balanced literacy have been the teaching methods used in the classroom. Classrooms across the nation continue to use these teaching methods, and it is these teaching methods that are causing students to fail. 
 
You may be saying, “I don’t believe in test scores.”  Then, how do you explain that reading scores were lower in 2019 than in 2017?  
 
That’s right, we have more students who cannot read today than we did in 2017.  If the teaching methods that we are using in the classroom were working and successfully helping students learn to read, then, even if test scores were biased or arbitrary, you would see an increase, even a modest increase in test scores.  Instead, we see a decline in the number of students who can read at grade level. 
 
Reading failure is a long-standing problem in the United States, and the problem is getting worse.  We need to wake up before it’s too late.  We need to change how we teach reading in the classroom.  We need to stop screaming about the “reading wars” and ask ourselves “Why have we allowed students to fail for over 30 years?”  If phonics, whole language, or even balanced literacy were effective, scores would not have been lower in 2019 than in 2017.  The “reading wars” are ridiculous and should end; they did not help students in the least.  A recent Washington Post article reviewed evidence that all three methods (phonics, whole language, and balanced literacy) are wrong and do not offer a solution to reading failure.
 
Giving an overview of the literacy problem in the United States, Rebecca Lake claims that approximately 20% of high school graduates cannot even read the words on their diploma as they put on their cap and gown and walk across the stage.

Furthermore, the National Center for Adult Literacy states that 85% of adolescents and youth seen by the courts are classified as functionally illiterate and unable to read.  [For more on these statistics, see Chapter 1 in my book, After-School Programming and Intrinsic Motivation:  Teaching At-Risk Students to Read.]  
 
Reading Failure Is a Major Problem That Is Getting Worse.  So, What Are We Going to Do about It?
 
If we simply send students back to the classroom and use the same teaching methods that were being used before Covid-19, we will send them back to a failing curriculum in reading. 
 
Many schools announced that they introduced more phonics into their curriculum in 2019 than in 2017 and are clamoring that the “reading wars” are over and that phonics won.  

If the “reading wars” are over, why did the students not win?  Why are more than half of the students across the nation still failing?

 
Why Does Phonics Education Fail? 

Earlier Post: We Are Using the Wrong Teaching Methods 
 
So, where does this leave us?  We have over half the students across the United States struggling or failing in reading.  We have three teaching methods that have been proven not to work for the students who need the most help.  Be careful.  Do not be like some who claim that the struggling students can’t learn to read, and that regardless which method we use, “low achieving” students will never learn to read.
 
I have personally had the pleasure of helping many students learn to read:
  

• Students who failed under whole language in the school classroom have come to my after-school program, the Reading Orienteering Club, and returned to the classroom reading at their age level.  Even if a student has been retained, we emphasize sending the child back to the classroom reading at their actual age level.  Some children have moved up 4 grade levels in reading in one year.
• A group of students continued to fail after the school placed them in Reading Recovery, but the same students succeeded with my method of vowel clustering.  They returned to the classroom reading at age level.
• Special needs students placed in a one-on-one pull-out program in systematic phonics still didn’t learn to read, but they came to my reading clinic and succeeded.  They learned to read.  I believe that every student can be taught to read.
•  One student failed for nine straight years in reading but learned to read with vowel clustering teaching methods.  The school had tried both balanced literacy and systematic phonics tutoring.  Still, she failed.  It’s never too late for a student to learn. 
• Students who failed under “balanced literacy,” a common school program that combines whole language and phonics, also learned to read at age level using vowel clustering.  We even had two students move up two grade levels in reading after only 48 hours of instruction with vowel clustering.

 
Why did one method succeed where phonics, whole language, and balanced literacy teaching methods had failed?
 
As David A. Kilpatrick explains in his book Equipped for Reading Success:
 
“Until recently, almost everyone thought that we store words by having some type of visual image of every word we know….  Many teaching approaches [like phonics and whole language] presume this. We assume that if students see the words enough, they will learn them. This is not true…. I believe this assumption that we store words based on visual memory is a major reason why we have widespread reading difficulties in our country…. The big discovery regarding orthographic mapping is that this oral “filing system” is the foundation of the “filing system” we use for reading words. We have no “visual dictionary” for reading that runs alongside our oral dictionary.” (pp. 59-68)
 
For a child to learn to read, the child must learn to match letters to the sounds they represent.  This is not an easily learned task for some children.  We need to use a teaching method that works with the oral language system and makes it easier for students to learn.
 
Therefore, phonics, whole language, and balanced literacy are never going to succeed with more than half of the students across the nation who cannot read at grade level because they are not being taught how to attach words to their oral language system.  The vowel clustering teaching method that I use at my reading clinic works with the brain and helps struggling children learn to read.
​
We need change. The students desperately need for schools to adopt a new approach for teaching reading.  Will they?  Will the pandemic's end solve all our problems? Chester E. Finn, Jr., Distinguished Senior Fellow and President Emeritus, Thomas B. Fordham Institute, comments on this very question in his article, “How Ya Gonna Keep ‘Em Back in That Old School?”  
 
“If the pandemic vanished tomorrow and all U.S. schools instantly reopened in exactly the same fashion as they were operating last February, how many parents would be satisfied to return their daughters and sons to the same old familiar classrooms, teachers, schedules and curricula?  A lot fewer than the same old schools and those who run and teach in them are expecting back!  Of course there’d be plenty of pent-up anger and frustration over the “lost year,” anxiety about kids struggling to catch up, … But would all that fade into gratitude for being able to resume the status quo ante? Nope.  Some fading would doubtless happen over the months. But how many millions of families would insist on something different instead of docilely accepting schooling as it operated before the plague hit?”
 
Is Finn correct, will parents demand change?  Will parents be satisfied to return to failed teaching methods?  Will parents be content to see their children struggle? 
 
How should we teach children to read?  
We need to change and use a method that works, but will the schools make the change?  Are the “reading wars” really over?  We will continue to pursue this question in my next blog post.