How I Use Substack to Keep Learning As a Busy Parent (No 2-Hour Study Blocks Required)
It was 9:17 p.m. last Tuesday, and I was on my knees on the kitchen linoleum, prying a neon green Lego brick out from under the fridge with a butter knife. My 7-year-old had remembered it 10 minutes after bedtime, my 10-year-old still needed me to sign his forgotten field trip form, and the chamomile tea I’d steeped an hour earlier was already lukewarm on the counter. Three years ago, this is the point where I’d have abandoned the vague goal I’d mumbled over breakfast — “keep learning something new, even with kids” — and mindlessly scroll short-form videos until my eyes burned. Now, I grabbed my phone off the counter after I fished the Lego out, tucked both kids back into their respective beds, and opened Substack.
I worked part-time as a reading intervention paraprofessional before my second kid was born, and I always planned to keep up with new literacy research, maybe go back for my teaching license once both kids were in school full time. I tried all the usual adult learning options first: signed up for a district online professional development course I never logged into after the first week, checked out 600-page books from the library that sat on my nightstand until they were due, saved dozens of Instagram infographics I never looked at again. A coworker sent me a link to a small newsletter about structured literacy in early 2021, and I signed up for Substack on a whim.
For the first six months, I treated it like any other social media follow list. I subscribed to every big-name education writer, every viral parenting newsletter, every random history or science account that popped up on my feed. Within a few months, I had more than 40 unread newsletters waiting in my inbox every Monday morning. It got to the point where I’d see the little red notification dot and feel guilty, like I was already behind on learning before the week even started. One rainy Saturday when both kids were at a birthday party, I sat down at my laptop with a coffee and unsubscribed from 32 accounts in 10 minutes. I only kept the ones whose work I had actually read and learned something from in the last month. That’s when it stopped feeling like another chore and started actually working for me.
The first unwritten rule I landed on, almost by accident, is that I curate for current questions, not broad topics. I don’t stay subscribed to every “parenting” or “education” newsletter forever just because I liked one post six months ago. Right now, my 10-year-old is working through long division and comes home frustrated most afternoons, so I pay $5 a month for a newsletter from a former middle school math coach who writes about how kids build number sense without endless worksheets. When that concept clicks for him, I’ll probably unsubscribe, or swap it out for something tied to whatever we’re dealing with next. Last winter, when our local school board was voting on budget cuts that would have eliminated our elementary school’s art program, I added a newsletter from a retired public school administrator who breaks down school funding in plain language. I unsubscribed two weeks after the vote, once I no longer needed weekly updates to follow the conversation. I only keep three permanent subscriptions: the structured literacy one I started with, a newsletter from a child psychologist who works directly with elementary-aged kids, and one from a science writer who covers child development. Everything else rotates. Most of the rotating newsletters I subscribe to are free; the paid ones cost less than I used to spend on fancy coffee once a week, and far cheaper than most formal professional development courses.
I turned all Substack notifications off on my phone a year and a half ago, and that one small change made more difference than anything else. It doesn’t ping me when a new issue drops, doesn’t pop up when I’m in the middle of making dinner or helping with spelling words. I open it only when I have a specific pocket of time: 10 minutes in the school pickup line, 15 minutes after the kids go to bed before I start folding laundry, the 20 minutes I spend waiting for my son’s soccer practice to end. I don’t treat every issue like a homework assignment I have to finish. If the subject line doesn’t tie to something I’m actively curious about or dealing with that week, I archive it immediately, no guilt. If it’s something I want to come back to later, I save it to one of three simple bookmark folders: tutoring, parenting, and just for fun. Last month, when my 7-year-old came home crying three days in a row because she’d fought with her core recess friend group, I pulled up a saved issue I’d bookmarked three months earlier about unstructured recess social dynamics. I didn’t have to wade through 10 pages of clickbait parenting blog results on Google to get advice from someone who actually works with kids every week.
I don’t spend time scrolling comment sections for fun, the way I do on other apps. Most of the time, I read the issue and close the app. But if I have a specific, small question, the comment sections and chat features work better than any formal Q&A I ever got in a district workshop. Last spring, when I was setting up a little reading corner for the two kids I tutor after school, I left a one-sentence comment on a classroom design newsletter asking if cheap floor cushions held up to daily use by wiggly 7-year-olds. The writer replied the same day with a link to a $15 option she’d used in her own classroom for three years, and three other tutors and teachers replied with tips for finding gently used ones at local thrift stores. I got exactly the information I needed in 10 minutes, no arguments, no viral hot takes, no one showing off how perfect their classroom is.
I mentioned this system to my friend Lila, a 4th grade teacher who has a toddler, at soccer practice a few months back. She was complaining that her required district professional development was all held over Zoom during her son’s naptime, and she never retained anything she watched half-asleep. She signed up that weekend, cut her list down to 8 newsletters tied to the classroom stuff she was actually working on (transition routines, reluctant readers, how to talk to parents about homework), and last week she texted me a screenshot of her daily schedule. She’d swapped her morning worksheet warm-up for a quick journal prompt she got from a newsletter, and cut transition time between activities by five minutes a day. That adds up to almost 15 hours of extra instructional time over a school year, she said. No expensive course, no full-day workshop, just a 12-minute read she did while her son ate toast one Saturday morning.
I still haven’t finished the 700-page literacy textbook I bought when I first thought about going back for my teaching license. Some weeks, I don’t open Substack at all, between sick kids, work deadlines, and last-minute trips to the store for poster board. Last month I got over-excited about native pollinator gardening and subscribed to six gardening newsletters at once, then spent 15 minutes paring them back down when I realized I only had time for one issue a week. I still save issues I never get around to reading, and every few months I go through and clear out the ones I no longer care about.
I used to think continuing to learn as an adult had to be a big, dramatic project: a degree, a certificate, a perfectly scheduled two-hour study block every night after the kids slept. That works for some people, but it never worked for me. What works now is 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there, learning exactly what I need to know right when I need to know it. I’m still slowly working my way through the literacy research I’ll need if I go back to work full time in the next year or two. Some weeks I get through three essays, some weeks I only read one issue about vintage picture books just because it sounds fun. It doesn’t look like the education I got when I was 20, but it sticks better. Last week I taught the kid I tutor how to form letters with playdough instead of tracing them on a worksheet, an idea I got from a 10-minute Substack read in the pickup line. That’s enough for now.
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