Better Learning Outcomes, Healthier Kids
by Michael J. Marino
As eight energetic boys run, play and holler as kids tend to do, Michael Devaney says, “I try to teach them you can be crazy and run around outside, but when we’re inside, it’s house rules.”
Devaney, or “Mr. Michael” as the children call him, owns First Things Childcare in the Billings Heights, and he said at his daycare, “There’s a certain culture I’m trying to establish here.”
That culture includes teaching his kids how to read using phonics, or the “sound-it-out” method. This method has been largely forgotten about in modern education, according to a 2018 story in The Hechinger Report, which revealed, “Schools often leave out a key piece of the reading puzzle because teachers aren’t trained to teach phonics.” This omission coupled with the effects of the COVID-19 lockdown, the report states, has resulted in a “disturbing” number of students who do not score as proficient in reading and language arts.
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