literacy coaching

[Susan/IN]

Are any of you involved with literacy coaching? Or, are any of you acting as a literacy coach? Our district has just implemented a literacy committee. Our first meeting will be sometime this month. Some of the people who signed up for the committee think that it's just for our reading textbook adoption, but I have a feeling it's a whole lot more. With our Title I $$$ being cut year after year, the two of us left in Title I will be too expensive for our budget next year, I'm afraid. I'm trying to second guess our administration (which is pretty useless I know!) and wondering how we're both going to be able to maintain our jobs. I've been in Title I 26 years; my colleague 16 years. Needless to say, our saleries eat up all our money; we have little/no supply $$$ and only enough PD money to pay for part of my continuing contact.

If any of you are/work with literacy coaches, let me know what your duties are and how it's going. Thanks.

 

[MrsM]

Susan, I'm not sure if this matches what you are asking about. Our state has something called Missouri Reading Initiative, affiliated with the state, in which teachers can work as literacy coaches in the schools. One coach will cover several schools, and schedule one or two days per month to meet with the teachers. She will present information, conduct activities, and model a lesson using someone's classroom and students. In our school, she spent two days, taking half second grade teachers in morning, then afternoon, then repeating the same with the third grade teachers. The teachers were expected to begin to implement what was modeled and talked about, and slowly change their teaching methods to match best practices. One of the final meetings in the year was for the coach to observe each teacher giving a lesson and for her suggestions to be offered. This is a 3-year process and we completed our last year. The coaches are usually classroom teachers who are very knowledgeable and who leave the public school for a time period to work as coaches for MRI.

 

[Sonia B.]

literacy coach information

Our district too is implementing literacy coaches. The best resource I have found is the Arkansas comprehensive literacy model. They have a great website you might check out if you have not found it already.