Sentences Of The Week

[Larry Ferlazzo]

geralt / Pixabay




I thought readers might, or might not, find this new regular post useful.

Each week, I highlight several sentences, with links to their sources, that I find interesting/concerning/useful. And they may, or may not, be directly connected to education. I may also include my own comments or related links.

This regular post will join my other regular ones on teaching ELLs, education policy, Artificial Intelligence, infographics, and Pinterest highlights, not to mention sharing of my regular Education Week posts.

Here are this week’s sentences:

Storytelling is the invisible pedagogy. See A BEGINNING LIST OF THE BEST RESOURCES ON TELLING STORIES WHEN WE TEACH

“The real answer to fixing the reading problems across the country and in Michigan is that we need to address poverty and we need to address housing instability,” said Jennifer Erb-Downward, director of Housing Stability Programs and Policy Initiatives at Poverty Solutions. See The Best Places To Learn What Impact A Teacher (& Outside Factors) Have On Student Achievement

Eco, who called lists “the origin of culture,” traced their function to our most basic human desires: “to make infinity comprehensible” and “to create order.” See The Bests Posts & Articles About Why We Like Lists

An Economist analysis of New York Times best-selling books from the 1930s to the 2020s found that “sentences in popular books have contracted by almost a third since the 1930s.”

Just 44 percent of adults ages 18 to 29 considered themselves to be “thriving” in 2026, down from 64 percent in 2010…

When put to a public vote, school vouchers have been unpopular; they’re perennial losers on the ballot. It’s maddening that ideologically motivated billionaires, who likely never sent their own children to public schools, have been able to push this policy through.

For the first time since the 1970s, the latest CRDC gathered information about teachers’ race, ethnicity and sex. It found that the workforce is 75% white, 9% Black and 11% Latino — a drastically different makeup than the students they serve.

I don’t think it’s fair that teachers get to use AI in lesson planning and grading and that students can’t use it for anything.

I don’t think there’s a single human being who remembers being in a K-12 classroom who does not understand that smaller class size is a plus.


The census doesn’t just count people. It determines which people count.

Why can’t people b satisfied with saying that explicit instruction is “sometimes” most effect way to teach, just like why AI ed tech companies can’t be satisfied in saying that AI can be very helpful with ELLs & helping teachers create materials (and not in “revolutionizing ed)?

— Larry Ferlazzo (@Larryferlazzo) October 4, 2026

For the expertise of practicing K-12 teachers to be recognized by superintendents, reporters, pundits, and some education researchers

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— Larry Ferlazzo (@larryferlazzo.bsky.social) October 6, 2026 at 6:29 AM

Athens’ days as a Great Power came to an end following an ill-fated intervention in a distant land that lasted far longer than planned and required a prolonged naval commitment.

— Gregory Brew (@gbrew24) October 7, 2026