International Literacy Coaching Cohort

Summary

A knowledgeable, well trained literacy coach can support the work of principals and curriculum specialists by providing deep and sustainable change in literacy instruction for students. A literacy coach is someone who can induct and mentor new teachers, organize professional book studies, create level book rooms, provide demonstration teaching, and engage in side-by-side coaching.

This program offers in-depth training over time and the chance to network with literacy specialists and leaders from schools around the region. While some participants will continue as class teachers and literacy leaders in their schools, others may become literacy coaches and assume other leadership roles. Regardless of their plan, we want to create a forum where they can map out their plans to use their learning once the cohort ends.

Curriculum

The curriculum is developed to be cyclical. During the first two sessions, Monica lays the groundwork for concepts that Shannon cycles back to deepening candidate understandings in later sessions, with a focus on building a community of learners. Monica ensures cohort members have a similar base understanding about balanced literacy and Lucy Calkins reading and writing workshop. She begins to delve into coaching and models a few coaching sessions with teachers in a school setting. Participants do some light coaching and practice some preliminary skills with each other.

When Shannon joins the final three sessions, she digs more deeply into coaching. In Session 4, both cohort members and their administrators attend to ensure each member has a plan to use elements of their studies in their work. At the end of each session, participants create a plan of action to implement between sessions. At the end of the final session, this plan is critical in launching participants’ post-cohort work.

There is an expectation that someone from your school’s administrative team agree to attend the 2-day administrator session (Friday-Saturday) in January 2020. Their initial commitment to attend this session is critical in supporting the participant’s efforts as a literacy leader/coach.

Please email Dr. Monica Medina at medinaolds@gmail.com with any queries about the Cohort.

Participants will:

• Learn to support their schools while deepening their own knowledge of literacy and assessment.
• Learn ways to facilitate small groups of teachers in analysis of student work.
• Understand adult learners
• Analyze the curricular components necessary to a balanced literacy program.
• Observe and practice coaching models of demonstrations of teaching.
• Observe and practice coaching conferences and side-by-side coaching.

Total registration fees for all 5 sessions: $3,800

• First session (WTI-2019): $700 - Deadline December 15, 2018
• Second session (SEC-2019): $1,000 - Deadline February 20, 2019
• Third session (FTI-2019): $750 - Deadline October 1, 2019
• Fourth session (WTI-2020): $750 - Deadline December 15, 2019
• Fifth session: To be delivered virtually - $600 (reduced from $1,050)

Includes:

• Conference/Institute registration and entrance to all social events.
• Morning/afternoon coffee breaks and lunch.
• Transportation daily to and from the hotel to the school each day of the Institute (Sessions 1, 3 and 4).

Not included: travel, accommodation.

To Read prior to the first session:

• Handouts entitled “Norms of High Performing Teams”, “Common Approaches to Building Team Performance”, “Developing Norms” (They were attached to the email sent to you in November and are included in the Day 1 handouts on the group site.)
• Chapters 1 and 3, Student-Centered Coaching, Diane Sweeney (This assignment was shared with you in November.)
• NESA Literacy Coaching Cohort Website 2019-20

Everyone bring:

1. Review your school documents for curriculum (i.e. standards and benchmarks, philosophy statement), instruction (i.e. units of study documents or essential agreements about instruction), assessment/evaluation (i.e. guidelines for administration) and or other resources. Choose a few of these documents that would be helpful for others in the group to see as models. Some of you may have done some unique work aligning various documents to your school standards, designed some reading or writing units or created a leveling guide for teachers to analyze texts to determine reading level. I’m asking each of you to choose only 1-3 documents as we will have many to learn from so sharing a few this session is enough. One copy of the documents you wish to share will be enough to show to others in the group, but please, if possible, also bring it on a flash drive if you have it accessible to you or have it in google docs to share. Often an administrator is willing to share it with you if he/she knows it is shared in this way globally with other schools.


2. Choose a professional book about literacy that you are currently reading or recently finished that you are excited to share with others and bring it with you to the session.


3. 1 copy of the Bonnie Campbell-Hill Reading and Writing Continuum (large original version of Bonnie C. Hill’s). If you are not using these in your school, you can print these out on large paper if possible and bring them with you to the conference.


4. Collated reading assessment data. By this I mean please bring data for one grade level from whatever common reading assessment you are currently using in your school such as DRA2, Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark Assessment or Teachers College or other. There is usually a collation sheet provided by the assessment publisher for recording student scores for your entire class. For instance, in DRA2, there is a page near the end of the teacher’s guide called “Focus for Instruction: Class Profile” (and there is one for different reading levels). On that sheet you list each child’s name in your class, their reading level on the assessment, and then scores for individual parts of the assessment. For DRA2, the only scores that you list are for areas that the student had a score of less than independent (3). Please bring this data in PRINT FORM so it is easily shared with/reviewed by others Please ask me if you need more information about this.
   
   

   For those of you who are working at the secondary level:

   If you have a schoolwide assessment for reading, fill in a class profile for at least one class of students indicating what their strengths and next steps are. If you don’t have a schoolwide reading assessment, then bring any information that you have about your students (or students in a class that you work within) about their reading proficiencies. Also, if available, bring one copy of one student’s reading assessment to be able to share with others in your group what that assessment entails.


5. Think about some learning engagement that will be approaching after the conference either in your classroom or with your faculty that you are a part of planning. This could be a specific literacy lesson in your classroom, a team meeting that you will be facilitating that is NOT about nuts and bolts but about professional learning, a parent education workshop, a schoolwide workshop, facilitating a group to analyze and evaluate student reading or writing assessment data — just about anything that you would need to think ahead in order to plan. You will have a conversation with a small group using a process that will help you with that planning. Bring any materials you would normally need in order to plan the event. DON’T worry about planning it ahead of time. The time in the conference will allow you to do that.


6. Copy of the book Student Centered Coaching by Diane Sweeney. If you have not been able to get this book yet, you need to in the future but for this conference you’ll need to make arrangements to borrow someone’s book to complete the readings prior to Day 3.


7. Flash drive (if you have one), in case you see something someone else has that you would like access to. The drive will be useful in case you or someone in the group doesn’t have google web based sharing capabilities.


8. Post it notes (although the school will provide some) and a highlighter if you use these when highlighting important elements in readings.


9. A read aloud you are going to be using in your classroom or in your work sometime after the conference. It can be either a fiction or non-fiction book.


10. You’ll go to this website to access the handouts and agendas for the conference from our google site. At that time, I suggest you consider printing out one set of the handouts. Many people in the past have found it helpful to hole punch them and bring them in a 3 ring binder to the conference. I know this is impacted by your learning style but most participants tend to print out the handouts and reference them in hard copy. Many of your engage fairy effectively with electronic documents but you may be reading documents and needing to highlight or write on them to summarize or share key points or work in a team on some aspect of the documents. Follow the directions on this document when you prepare to navigate the site and print out documents.


11. Be sure to visit the site and attach your name, brief CV and a picture to the site under the section Cohort Directory. The name of the document is “Name to a Face”.


12. Suggested dress: You’ll be seated a lot but you’ll also be in classrooms from time to time. In both settings you might be seated on the floor, seated in tight spots, or working on the floor in small groups so dress comfortably enough to engage in these activities.