How to Get the Most Out of Substack for Self-Education As a Busy Parent or Teacher
It was 9:42 on a Tuesday, and I was perched on the edge of my kitchen counter, one sock missing, staring at a Substack inbox with 47 unread posts. I’d signed up six months prior, after leaving my 3rd grade teaching job to stay home with my two kids, determined not to let my whole brain turn into playground schedules and sight word drills. I’d followed big names in education science, a few parenting writers, even a newsletter about foraging for edible plants I’d been curious about since we moved to our weedy backyard. But every time I opened the app, I’d scroll three paragraphs of one post, save it for later, click a viral hot take about school reading curriculums, get annoyed, close the app, and feel like I’d wasted 15 minutes I could have spent folding laundry or going to bed early.
I vented about this to my friend Lila, who still teaches 4th grade, when our kids tore around the neighborhood playground a few weeks later. She brushed wood chips off her jeans and handed me a half-melted iced coffee. “I used to do that too,” she said. “Treated it like social media, followed everyone anyone ever mentioned. Now I only let myself follow 15 max. If three posts in a row don’t tie to something I actually do that week, I unsubscribe. No hard feelings.”
That night, after both kids were asleep, I cleaned out my subscriptions. I cut the foraging writer who spent more posts talking about his $400 custom knife than actual edible weeds. I cut three education writers who only posted rants with no new information. I cut the productivity guru who posted five times a week and said I could “hustle” a master’s degree during nap time. I ended up with 16 subscriptions, and I’m down to 11 now, still pruning every couple months. That one change cut that overwhelmed feeling by 80 percent. Substack works best as a small collection of people you want to hear from, not a feed you have to keep up with.
Next, I stopped saving every long, interesting post “for later,” when I imagined I’d have a quiet hour with tea to take notes and really absorb it. That quiet hour never comes. Most weeks, the only 10 consecutive minutes I get to myself before 9 p.m. is the 10 minutes I spend eating peanut butter toast at the counter before the kids wake up, around 6:20 a.m. That’s my Substack time now. I open the app, pick one new post, and read while I eat. If it’s a longer piece, I hit the audio play button and listen while folding laundry, loading the dishwasher, or walking our dog around the block after dinner.
Last month, I worked through a three-part series on early dyslexia intervention from an Ohio reading specialist that way. Ten or 12 minutes a day while matching socks added up to the whole series by week’s end, and I absorbed more than I ever would have trying to read at 9:30 p.m., when I usually re-read the same paragraph four times before realizing I’m just staring at words. You don’t need a dedicated study block to learn this way. Mindless routine tasks leave space for your brain to sit with a new idea, no extra effort required.
I also stopped forcing formal note-taking. I used to keep a notes app folder full of copied quotes and jotted action items I never looked at again. Now, if a post ties to a conversation my husband and I have had about our 7-year-old Milo’s math homework, or tantrum strategies for our preschooler, I just forward it to him with one line about why I’m sending it. Putting that single thought into words to explain to someone else makes the idea stick far better than any highlighted quote. I don’t need a fancy filing system, just one quick pass at processing the idea out loud, even over text.
I also reserve one spot on my list for a writer who disagrees with my default assumptions about education and parenting. Back when I taught, I leaned hard into whole-language reading approaches and wrote off phonics advocates as rigid people who hated fun books. I followed one a couple years ago, fully ready to disagree with everything. I don’t sign on to all her takes – I rolled my eyes at her recent call for a total graphic novel ban in K-2 classrooms – but her writing about explicit decoding practice made me rethink how I supported struggling readers in my old classroom, and how I talk to Milo about reading now. I don’t have to adopt someone’s entire worldview to learn one useful thing, and if they annoy me three posts running, I unsubscribe with no guilt.
I also keep two subscriptions that have nothing to do with parenting or teaching at all. Right now that’s a tiny backyard bird newsletter by a retired local park ranger, and one about low-fuss vegetable gardening for people who kill most of their plants. For a long time I thought all self-education had to be “productive,” that every minute learning had to make me a better caregiver or teacher. But curiosity doesn’t work that way. Last spring, I learned the little slate-gray birds at our winter feeder are dark-eyed juncos, and mentioned it to Milo over snack time. We ended up taping construction paper to the fridge for a bird-spotting list, and it’s still there, covered in crayon marks. Learning something just because you want to is good on its own, even if it never turns into a teachable moment.
A few other small, boring rules keep this working. I never buy courses from Substack writers, no matter how much I like their free posts. I’ve wasted too much money on big online courses I never finished, and 10 minutes a day of consistent, low-pressure reading adds up to far more usable knowledge than a six-hour video series I’ll never open. I only pay for two subscriptions, both writers who release most of their work for free, and I pay because I read every post, not because they guilt readers for “stealing” content. If a writer spends more than two paragraphs per post pitching a product, I unsubscribe. I don’t force myself to finish any post that bores me, even if everyone online is talking about it.
Last week at a park day, a local mom sat twisting her hands, saying she was already shopping tutors for her kindergartener who wasn’t reading independently yet. I passed along what I’d learned from that reading specialist: the normal range for independent reading stretches to the end of 1st grade, and reading silly picture books for fun beats flashcards right now. I didn’t cite a study or act like an expert, just shared a small thing I’d picked up while folding socks. She relaxed and put the tutor search on hold. That’s the kind of learning I signed up for, not a diploma or a stack of certificates.
Right now, my unread count usually hovers between two and six. It never hits zero, and that’s fine. Some weeks, if a kid is sick or we’re out of town, I don’t open the app at all. I cycled through three bird newsletters last year before finding the ranger’s, after the first two filled up with sponsored feeder ads. I still occasionally save a long post for “later” and never get to it.
Last Tuesday, I was perched on that same counter with my chipped mug, and I read a short post from a developmental psychologist about how unplanned, unscheduled time is what kids remember most, not structured enrichment. I closed the app, wiped crumbs off my plate, and when Milo got home from school, we skipped his optional math worksheet and drove to the creek to look for frogs. I didn’t take a note. I didn’t post about it. I just did it. That’s the payoff, I think – not a perfect learning routine, just small, quiet shifts, one 10-minute peanut butter toast session at a time.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » How to Get the Most Out of Substack for Self-Education As a Busy Parent or Teacher