Content Category: Lead Literacy
Results
Using Norms in PLCs
Is there anything more awkward than having to reprimand an adult? To ask an adult - a colleague, even - to stop scrolling through Facebook during a meeting? To remind...
Literacy Audit (Part 2): Taking Your School’s Pulse
When I go to the doctor for my annual wellness check, the intake nurse starts by taking my pulse. It is the simplest of procedures—there is no medical equipment needed,...
Literacy Self-Audit (Part 1): Beginning Questions
If you’ve been hired to be a principal or literacy coach, you may feel confident about your leadership capabilities in literacy instruction, or you may suspect you have quite a...
Setting Norms in PLCs
I don’t know if I heard it, read it, or just realized it, but I know that I believe it. When you are working with a group of adults over...
Auditing Your Literacy Leadership: Introduction
Principals, instructional coaches, and curriculum leaders are by nature confident and courageous people. We find it easy to build relationships with teachers, students, and parents. We know how to communicate...
You’ve Done It. What Happens Next?
You’ve done it. You’ve flexed your educational muscles and potificated upon your beliefs and perspectives. Sent the thank-you cards or emails.Then spent the next few days waiting, checking your phone...
You’re New to Coaching. Now What?
I’ll never forget my first year as a coach. My position was in a district new to me where I would be teaching kindergarten for half of the day and...
Resisting Traditional Definitions of Productivity
The first day back at school after spring break felt like stepping on a treadmill that was going full speed. Testing season was upon us, a school recognition application was...
Ways to Personalize PD
Literacy coaches Cathy Mere and Kelly Hoenie talk about some of their efforts to personalize professional development for teachers over the past year, and what they learned that they will...
Old Technology for New Engagement
In a world with so many connections, is there still room for learning that is untethered? My son recently found my 35 mm camera. He was playing with the lens,...
The Instagram Project
“So, what have you been reading lately?” I have learned the power these seven words hold to invite readers to share their reading lives with others. As a literacy coach,...
Time to Plan
It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about? —Henry David Thoreau I’m a mom to four active teenagers. Our...
Coaching Minute: Rethinking Time
Jennifer Schwanke finds that one of the biggest changes in moving from teaching to leadership is control (or lack of it) over her time.
Coaching Minute: Tech Tools
Cathy Mere shares two tech tools that are invaluable resources for her coaching.
Personalizing Professional Learning Opportunities
Planning the professional learning for the coming school year is a tightrope walk. We want to honor teacher autonomy and choice, yet be vigilant in keeping the focus on literacy....
Helping Teachers Develop Their Own Chartbooks
As a coach, I am in many classrooms, and I am constantly reevaluating and restocking the contents of the bag I carry with me whenever I am working with students....
Student Centered and Teacher Driven: Coaching and Instructional Assessment
As I reflected with Joy about our recent coaching cycle, we looked back to our original goals and the pre- and post-data on her students' work. We had seen more...
Fail to Learn
We perform for ourselves, often the harshest of audiences. Thomas Newkirk I think every teacher has a grade level or subject area they would prefer not to teach. I...
Celebrate and Reflect
Have you paused yet to celebrate all you've accomplished with teachers this year? Literacy coaches Cathy Mere and Kelly Hoenle take a few minutes to reflect on what has gone...
That Student: Ending the Year with a PD Celebration
Students teach us how to be better. Every year we learn a lot from the children in our classrooms. To celebrate our students making us better, our last staff meeting...
Helping Teachers Weed Libraries
I am a book collector. I love seeing books on my shelves, books in baskets in each room, book stacks on my desk, and books beside my bed. When I...
