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Finding the Classroom Rhythm
A classroom’s rhythm is not simply its daily schedule. It is the shared pattern children gradually learn:

Dr. Monique Salinas
Sep 145 min read


The Children Who Surprised Their Teachers
“The teaching of Spanish words gave my kids a way to connect to the children in class who spoke Spanish.”

Dr. Monique Salinas
Aug 283 min read


The Question I Did Not Ask
Every movement activity arcs from arousal back to calm. Children fly like birds, then find the nest and rest. They move big, then they settle together on a cue.

Dr. Monique Salinas
Aug 252 min read


The February Problem
I have never once seen an education program fail in the way the research warns about.
What I have watched, more times than I can count, is February fatigue

Dr. Monique Salinas
Aug 122 min read


The Most Expensive Place to Help a Child
A tutor for a struggling fourth grader costs a district between $1,000 and $3,000 a year. The same child in Kindergarten costs about $13.

Dr. Monique Salinas
Aug 103 min read


Before Phonics, There Is Rhythm
Why does a song help a Kindergartener learn to read? The brain systems that track rhythm and pitch are the ones that later map sounds to letters.

Dr. Monique Salinas
Aug 72 min read


Where a Ten-Minute Lesson Fits in a Kindergarten Day
Kindergarten teachers ask where it fits before they ask whether it works. A look at how ten minutes, twice a week, uses time a classroom already spends.

Dr. Monique Salinas
Aug 42 min read


Numbers matter in education — especially when leaders are deciding where to invest limited time and budget.
Compounding is usually the enemy in education research. Learning loss compounds. Achievement gaps compound. It's rare to see an intervention where the benefit compounds instead of the deficit.

Dr. Monique Salinas
Jul 122 min read


4 Ways to Fight Summer Slide
Not every summer learning loss solution requires a new program purchase or a district-wide rollout. Some of the most effective habits are things families and educators can start doing this week, at no cost.

Dr. Monique Salinas
Jul 122 min read


We may be teaching phonological awareness the hard way.
There’s a quiet implication here for how we think about struggling readers. A child who’s behind on phonological awareness may not need more drilling of the skill they’re failing.

Dr. Monique Salinas
Jul 112 min read


15,000 students proved it works. A license makes it last.
By the 2016–17 school year, the original Mind Meets Music program was serving more than 15,000 early learners across 29 schools and 206 classrooms. It was federally evaluated, standards-aligned, and producing measurable gains. And it stopped. Understanding why is the key to understanding the platform I’m building now. The program stopped scaling for a structural reason and paused entirely for a personal one. Structurally, delivery depended on Master Teaching Artists physica

Dr. Monique Salinas
Jul 102 min read


How does a song help a five-year-old learn to read?
When a child sings, claps, or moves to a rhythm, multiple areas of the brain activate simultaneously: auditory processing, motor coordination, memory, and language centers all engage together.

Dr. Monique Salinas
Jul 102 min read


It looks like a brain break, and it works like a literacy intervention.
Intervention, or enrichment? Here’s how to tell.

Dr. Monique Salinas
Jul 92 min read


The ten minutes that reset the room after recess
Ask any early learning teacher to name the hardest minutes of the day, and most will say the same thing: the transitions.

Dr. Monique Salinas
Jul 82 min read


The Equity Gap
Summer learning loss doesn't affect every student equally — and that's exactly why it matters so much to education leaders working on equity.

Dr. Monique Salinas
Jul 82 min read


Summer Learning Loss
Students lose roughly one to two months of reading and math skills over summer break.

Dr. Monique Salinas
Jul 72 min read


It started in 2009, when I watched my students struggle to write a thank-you note.
It started in 2009, when I watched my students struggle to write a thank-you note.

Dr. Monique Salinas
Jul 72 min read


A Spanish language component built into a neuroscience-based curriculum.
The clearest test of an early literacy program isn’t how it performs in advantaged classrooms. It’s how it performs with the students conventional instruction most often leaves behind.

Dr. Monique Salinas
Jul 42 min read


97% of teachers said it worked. 100% said it built memory skills.
Teachers are the most rigorous skeptics of any classroom tool, and rightly so.

Dr. Monique Salinas
Jul 32 min read


We don’t teach phonological awareness. We build the brain that produces it.
the most reliable way to build phonological awareness in an early learner may not be to teach phonological awareness directly. It may be to build the cognitive systems that produce it.

Dr. Monique Salinas
Jul 22 min read
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