Choice Lit Topic: Literacy Coaches
A simple question – who will coach the coaches? If you’re a literacy coach, you already know there is no job more amazing or overwhelming in a school. Our Choice Literacy library includes a small sample of our resources for literacy coaches. If you work as a coach, you’ll want a subscription that includes access to our Leaders Lounge, where there are over 900 resources for coaches, including study group protocols, videos of demonstration lessons, and guides for designing coaching cycles.
Results
Literacy Coach Confidential: Teachers Resent Me – What Can I Do?
I am the new literacy coach at our school, and the teachers resent me. I was hired at a time when budgets are down. Class size is up, money for...
The Literacy Coach Work Area: Arranging Materials in Cramped Spaces
Many literacy specialists and coaches find themselves in cramped work spaces when it comes to their desks, storage areas for materials, and meeting rooms for conferring with colleagues. In this...
Professional Development Needs Assessment Inventory
Fall arrives and the school is busy with the activity of putting rooms together, team meetings to plan the first few days of school and set goals, and staff meetings...
Planning a New Teachers’ Professional Development Program
It's the beginning of July and I am already sketching out plans for the first day of Charting the Course, the monthly professional development group for new teachers in our school....
Puzzle Kids: Observing and Analyzing Challenging Students (E-GUIDE)
Puzzle kids. Students on the bubble. Children in danger of falling through the cracks. Every teacher can instantly think of students who fit these terms, and can just as quickly...
The Dog Ate My Study Group Plans! Four Instant (and Fun and Reflective) No-Prep Teacher Workshops (E-GUIDE)
Okay, so maybe it wasn't the dog that ate your plans. Maybe leading today's study group is the 45th item on your "To Do" list, and you just didn't get...
Layered Support: Meeting the Needs of Beginning Teachers
The new teachers who reported feeling the most supported described their schools as having what we called "integrated professional cultures." There, new teachers could expect frequent and meaningful interaction among...
Coaching Moment: Reorganizing a Classroom Library
It may sound like such a minor coaching experience, and yet it was so powerful. I was asked by a second-grade teacher to help reorganize her classroom library, so it...
Listen In: Jeffry’s Ocean Story
As a literacy coach, I'm lucky to be in the same class once a week for writing workshop throughout the year. Sometimes I refer to it as my "lab classroom,"...
Idealism Fades to Reality: Thinking Back to My Days as a New Teacher
I still remember picking up the phone in my kitchen and hearing the words, "We would like to offer you a third grade position." Fifteen years have passed, yet the...
Common Core Conversations: Increasing Argumentative Writing
"Let's argue more often!" Does this exclamation bring up some feelings for you? Are they positive? Maybe . . . if you won debates in high school. Perhaps the word...
Building a Professional Library from Scratch (SHORTS)
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,...
I Think, I Wonder, I Understand: Making Sense of the Work of Literacy Coaches
The "I Think I Wonder I Understand" (TWU) chart was designed collaboratively with colleagues who are preparing to become literacy coaches -- Molly Ayer, Leslie Barrett-Jones, Susan Kiningham, Darcie St....
