Focus Quotes

“When we unnecessarily elongate the process of "learning to read," we postpone "reading to learn" - learning itself - by years.”
― Mike Schmoker, Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning

“worksheets - the archenemy of abundant, purposeful reading (and discussion and writing).”
― Mike Schmoker, Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning

“These programs and reading series are the fruit of an intellectually exhausted literacy industry that lost its way long ago, even as we mutely accepted its misguided agenda - to complicate reading and literacy so that we will purchase its programs and materials.”
― Mike Schmoker, Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning

“I have found that educators yearn to be told something like this: There will be no more initiatives—at least for a time. Instead, we will focus only on what will have an immediate and dramatic impact on learning in your classrooms: ensuring the implementation of a common, content-rich curriculum; good lessons; and plenty of meaningful literacy activities (such as close reading, writing, and discussion) across the curriculum.”
― Mike Schmoker, Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning

“simplicity is a benevolent but jealous taskmaster,”
― Mike Schmoker, Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning

“Clarity," writes Buckingham, "is the antidote to anxiety … if you do nothing else as a leader, be clear" (2005, p. 146).”
― Mike Schmoker, Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning