After the Bell
What happens once the bell goes?
Dr. June's Literacy Coaching Blog

Hint: The Goal Is to Become Unnecessary Dr. June Starkey, OCT About half of the students who come to me have already tried another tutoring service. Their families usually tell me the same thing: after three months, they weren't seeing results. That isn't because those tutors didn't care. Many tutoring services promise better test scores and report cards, and that's a worthy goal. But if a student can only produce those results when a more experienced learner is sitting besid

Short breaks with reflection can boost focus, understanding, and retention for students of all ages. Discover simple strategies backed by research to make study time more effective. Learning is not only about absorbing information. It is also about monitoring understanding, noticing confusion, and adjusting strategies along the way. That is where metacognition comes in.

When we ignore the conditions that perpetuate inequities in educational contexts, the status quo becomes “the trouble with normal is it always gets worse” (Cockburn, 1983). The term 'status quo' is rarely a compliment—but because inertia is the biggest enemy of change in education systems, more of the same re: declining test scores is exThe reality that privilege exists is not only the reason for declining test scores in Ontario, but SEEING that could actually help us begin t

Our culture is profoundly affected by the racism that is entrenched in established and systemic practices, and is all too real for many young people and their families (Canadian Human Rights Commission, 2018, 2023; Gajaria et al., 2021); Canadian Human Rights Commission, 2018). In Canada in 2024, nearly half (45%) of racialized Canadians, some as young as 15 years old, shared that they had faced racism and discrimination in the previous 5 years. At the same time, 8 in 10 (81%

Last year, I taught extended French half-time to bright middle schoolers, and in addition to preparing and teaching lessons to multiple classes of entitled 11-13 year-olds in an IB program, there were significant requirements beyond teaching. Administrative tasks included supervision for cell phone use, hot lunch distribution, and community outreach via proactive parent calls, meetings, and emails–in addition to daily duty, and documenting progress and reporting on the Common

Like many of you, I felt a resounding lack of surprise when I heard Ontario Education Minister Paul Calandra’s solemn thoughts about the need for curricular reform and the falling EQAO test scores in his press conference on December 3, 2025. As a former marker of the Grade 3 Writing component of the EQAO provincial test and a teacher with 3+ decades of teaching experience, I am aware that this performative “improvement” opportunity felt detached from reality. In retrospect,