I read this article today about a professor’s experience visiting 29 different kinder classes across the country: edweek.org/teaching-lea…

It made me think a lot about the over-teaching conversation and how we simply do not know what's happening inside classrooms until we get inside them. Even then, we only visit for a few hours. At the same time, I'm confident (like you are) that some places are absolutely over-teaching phonics. But I’m also confident that others are under-teaching. Other schools are simply doing a poor job, and I’m not sure what category they belong in. Still others are doing a great job.  

Anyway, all of this makes me want to STOP discussing over-teaching. Not because it doesn’t keep me up at night (it does), but because this critique is not specific and is likely to fall on deaf ears. In fact, it’s most likely to resonate with the schools that are already under-teaching phonics and would like to do even less. I wonder if a more productive approach would be to surface specific examples of what you (and others) mean by over-teaching and anchor the conversation around these examples.