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Comment by 1123581321 | Hacker News Reader

This looks entertaining but it has almost nothing to do with teaching reading and literacy. I’m a little depressed by this, honestly. The failure of Sesame Street to educate beyond pre-reading is well documented and isn’t the model we should be pursuing in 1-12 and especially not via vendor lock-in at a district level.

What I’d love to see is someone who figures out how to scale and make attractive the approach of a method like 100 Easy Lessons. This is the book I give or recommend any parent whose child is struggling with reading (whether at home or at school.)

I’m a parent, and married to a parent and opinionated educator, for the record.

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Sorry to hear your disappointment. To be clear, this is not mandated at the District level. In NYC, each school acts as its own mini CEO, if you will. They have full autonomy to choose from any contracted vendor, of which there are many reading tool or reading program options. They choose us by choice, and continue to use us, because of engagement levels, learning outcomes and response from teachers :)

I would love to make sure I understand your feedback and disappointment more clearly in hopes to learn from it, esp since you are an educator. While I reference Sesame Street - we are not Sesame Street (as I am sure you gathered from our description already). What parts of our program or model specifically are you depressed by? I would love to either address it or at least learn from your feedback. Cheers.

Hmm - I think the reference to Sesame Street in the title might have been confusing some readers, so I've changed it in an attempt to highlight what's unique about your approach. Is that ok?

(Submitted title was "Launch HN: Litnerd (YC S21) – Sesame Street Inspired Reading Program for Schools")

I agree. Always welcome incorporating the feedback from HN community! My initial reasoning was to highlight where my inspiration came from, not that we modeled Sesame Street :) Clearly was more confusing than helpful. Thanks!

Thanks; I’m glad to hear teachers have a choice.

I didn’t communicate well re: Sesame Street. I didn’t mean that your show is actually like Sesame Street, rather that the model is to use the entertainment value of the readers/actors/action to engage students until they start to read well due to other factors, rather than to directly teach those fundamentals and rely on the students’ delight in their fledgling skills to pull them further into good habits and teacher-guided reading.

To clarify you are against (or I guess not in favor of) art and theatre, story-telling etc. to improve learning outcomes and interest in reading? I can sense you're being super thoughtful in your followup and I feel I might be missing your feedback, which is why I want to respectfully clarify.

If what I paraphrased above truly is your position, we will have to respectfully agree to disagree. Tons of research shows that the brain synapses grow stronger through active participation in the arts/story-telling/theatre. These essential activities at an early age can actually create new neural pathways and fortify those that are already present.

But again, I want to be careful to not miss your point because if you took the time to clarify, I want to make sure I beneifit from your feedback and sound like I'm ignoring it.

Yes, I think that’s a fair summary. I agree we must disagree and I likewise have appreciated your thoughtful replies. :)

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