work, follow @dargentar125 on Twitter.
Katherine A. N. Gillies works as a reading specialist and English teacher at Niles North High School in Skokie, Illinois, where she previously served as a literacy coach. Here, Katherine serves as the lead architect of schoolwide literacy improvement work, including building a comprehensive system of intervention and support for struggling readers as well as crafting research-based curricula to ensure the continued literacy growth of all students. Katherine leads a number of collaborative teams and cross-curricular initiatives aimed at using data to inform instruction, building capacity for disciplinary literacy, and employing responsible assessment practices in the secondary arena. She has presented at local and national conferences, including that of the National Council of Teachers of English, on these topics.
Katherine earned a bachelor’s degree in literature and secondary education from Saint Louis University; a master’s degree in literacy, language, and culture with reading specialist certification from the University of Illinois, Chicago; and a master’s degree in educational leadership and administration from Concordia University, Chicago. She is also a certified trainer for Project CRISS (Creating Independence through Student-Owned Strategies).
To learn more about Katherine’s work, follow @Literacyskills on Twitter.
Maureen M. Rubenstein is a literacy coach and special education instructor at Adlai E. Stevenson High School. As a teacher, she works with students on individualized education plans who have diagnosed reading, writing, and emotional disabilities. In her coaching role, she partners with instructors from all divisions to work on disciplinary literacy. In addition to coaching individual teachers, she works with the other literacy coaches to coordinate and implement book clubs, professional development sessions, and one-on-one coaching sessions.
Maureen received a bachelor’s degree in special education from Illinois State University, a master’s degree in language literacy and specialized instruction (reading specialist) from DePaul University, and a master’s degree in educational leadership from Northern Illinois University. Maureen is also a certified trainer for Project CRISS, and she is certified to teach Wilson Reading.
To learn more about Maureen’s work, follow @SHS_LiteracyMR on Twitter.
Brian R. Wise is a literacy coach and English teacher at Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois. He has taught a wide array of English and literacy intervention courses throughout his teaching career. As a literacy coach, he works with faculty members from all divisions of the high school to build teachers’ capacity for embedding literacy skills into classroom instruction and assessment.
Brian received his bachelor’s degree in English education from Boston University, a master’s degree in English from DePaul University, and master’s degrees in reading and in principal leadership from Concordia University, Chicago.
To learn more about Brian’s work, follow @Wise_Literacy on Twitter.
To book Daniel M. Argentar, Katherine A. N. Gillies, Maureen M. Rubenstein, or Brian R. Wise for professional development, contact [email protected].
PREFACE
To begin this book, and to immediately demonstrate the value of professional learning communities (PLCs) to support positive, thoughtful collaboration, we want to share a real-life experience we had with a group of fellow teachers in our school. We believe this serves as an example of the familiar struggle occurring in many schools when teachers from various content areas struggle to approach literacy instruction.
“I don’t have time for literacy” and “I don’t know how to teach literacy” are two challenges we often hear when we work with teachers on how to integrate literacy strategies into their classrooms in ways that support learning. In the fall of 2013, we, the authors of this book serving together as a group of literacy coaches, were asked to present a workshop about science literacy to a group of science teachers working to adopt the new Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS; NGSS Lead States, 2013). Our purpose was to introduce how the NGSS were designed to focus teaching and learning practices on argumentation and literacy within science curricula. Our goals were not only to be a resource for our science teachers as they began to align their curriculum to the NGSS for grades 6–12, but also to help them better understand how a focus on literacy supports their efforts to teach students to think like scientists. At that time, many of those science teachers recognized the need to elevate student literacy skills, but many of them felt underprepared in this area. We couldn’t blame them. After all, few were trained to teach literacy, and almost all of them felt stressed about the amount of science content they had to cover to prepare their students for the future. On top of everything else, trying to find time to integrate literacy strategies into teaching and learning seemed overwhelming to them.
As literacy coaches, we spent three days that fall collaborating with teams of science teachers, setting goals that focused on results, and generating innovative approaches to student learning. As we patiently offered ideas and listened as these teachers developed their plans, we learned about the challenges they faced in teaching science, the essential skills they planned to focus on, and the ways they discussed student learning in science. As we began to build collaborative relationships with our science teachers, we began to seed our discussions with ideas about literacy, and we worked with them to consider how a focus on literacy could connect with their focus on important science standards and the skills needed to develop as a scientist.
However, as they revised their curriculum, their focus on the content skills constantly outweighed their focus on the literacy skills necessary for students to become strong science learners. Concerns about cutting into content learning time and about the lack of ability to teach literacy came up again and again. Some teachers simply said, “I don’t have time for literacy.” Some said, “I need to focus more on the science.” We soon concluded that a three-day workshop was not enough to truly integrate the changes we were hoping to make.
We knew we had more work to do, and we knew we would need to rethink how we could support teachers—not just through a short workshop. As we rethought our approach, we continued to return to our values and the commitments we had made to our PLC. In so doing, we considered ways to design our literacy work by establishing a focus committee dedicated to building literacy-based strategies and developing ongoing literacy coaching for our teachers who wanted to think differently about teaching and learning. By taking these steps, and with the support of our administrators and school district, we worked to make use of our PLC culture to impact change.
Although it was a struggle for the whole group to digest at one time, our initial introduction to literacy and the NGSS ended up resonating with some of the teachers. This planted literacy seeds that we were able to pursue with a smaller group of science teachers. The story of Cami (a pseudonym we use to ensure privacy) highlights our successful process of engaging these teachers and inspiring them to volunteer to join us (the literacy coaches) and to join our schoolwide literacy committee.
Early in the year, after our initial presentations on science and literacy, we had an encounter with a science teacher and colleague named Cami. We knew that, as a veteran teacher, Cami was a strong voice in her department, and we wanted to convince her to join our literacy committee so we could support her work and help her students progress in her science classroom. We talked with her about the cool things teachers could accomplish by using literacy and science
