Choice Lit Topic: Leadership
Do you guide teachers, specialists, and literacy coaches? Here are tools, advice, and strategies school leaders need for their daily work in staff meetings, study groups, and one-on-one discussions with colleagues. If you have a leadership role in coaching teachers and designing professional development, you’ll want an upgraded membership with access to our Leaders Lounge.
Results
Creating a Model Writing School
It's 3:45 p.m. after a long day of teaching. Our media center is buzzing as teachers excitedly greet each other, grab a quick snack, catch up on the day, and...
Creating a Model Writing School . . . Next Steps
Just like anything else that is new, our first steps in creating a model writing school were tentative. We took a few steps forward, stumbled a little, got back up...
Mentoring from the Real to the Ideal: Mental Images of Teaching
When I work with new teachers, I often feel compelled to tell the story of my friend Michelle who was afraid to be a mother. Married for three years, Michelle...
Out of the Closet and into the Classroom: Bookroom Management Tips for Literacy Coaches
Literacy coaches seldom have neutral feelings about their school's literacy closet or bookroom. They either love it or hate it. They love it at the beginning of the school year...
Towards Thoughtful Strategy Instruction
I think it's about to happen again. Education is famous for wide swings of the pendulum. From code emphasis to meaning emphasis, from whole class to small group . ....
What Goes in the Writer’s Notebook?
I start off each school year with good intentions. My files will be more organized, my newsletters more concise, and my time more productive. I'll read more about teaching math...
Tips for More Effective Debriefing Sessions
We do a lot of demonstration lessons in our coaching work. Lately we have been reflecting on how we structure these sessions. We find the debriefing of the lesson to...
Expectations for Grade-Level Team Meetings
We are often asked by coaches how we get the teams we are working with to actively participate in the meetings we facilitate. When first asked this question, we tended...
Back to the Classroom
The evening before the last literacy coaching network meeting of the year, I opened my email and found a message from Lydia. She said that she was thinking about skipping...
From Congeniality to Collegiality: Protocols for Meetings and Observations
While we all want to assume that the friendly conversations in the lunchroom and the congenial planning of field trips and homework indicate that teaching teams work collaboratively, we know...
Hallmarks of Reading Workshop
One of the many things we value at our school is ensuring that the experiences students have in workshops are authentic. Part of the process of coming to common understandings...
“I Used to . . . Now I”
Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action. Peter F. Drucker I've been thinking about Peter Drucker's advice as I work...
Opening Classroom Doors
The role of the reading specialist in elementary schools has shifted so much in the last ten years. Many specialists have gone from working solely with students to serving, at...
What Reading is Like: Sports Analogies to Use with Parents
Parent conferences are just around the corner in many schools, and families are eager to learn about their child's growth and needs as readers. We often use sports analogies to...
Building a Professional Library from Scratch
Almost everything about Emily's new coaching position was perfect. The school was one of those charming, old, traditional brick buildings with lots of character: high ceilings, hardwood floors, wide corridors,...
Eight Tips for Building Relationships: A Tale of Two Literacy Coaches
I stopped by Monroe School to see the literacy coach, Kate, before the school day began. I was in her office for about five minutes when second-grade teacher Leah burst...
The Bed and Breakfast Model: An Analogy for Schools
We recently presented at the National Council of Teachers of English Annual Meeting on Theory, Leadership, and Voice in the Art and Science of Teaching with Curt Dudley-Marling, who we discovered lives...
Literacy Coach Confidential: My Colleague Talks Too Much!
I lead professional development workshops and study groups at my school, and we have a new faculty member who is such a talker -- she's pleasant and bright, but so...
Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: Recommending Yourself
The significance of a man is not in what he attains but in what he longs to attain. —Kahlil Gibran When I taught fifth grade, I used writing workshop time...
What’s the Most Beautiful Thing You Know About…?
We've been meeting each week this spring with a group of teachers pre-K through grade 12, all of us exploring literacy teaching in our classrooms around our teacher research questions....
A Reason to Learn
This fall my son Ben ran on the cross country team. As I walked in the door after work recently, Ben shared that he had come in 9th place overall....
