insight into varying and supportive literacy strategies that your teams can integrate into their instructional practices. But as we wrote in the introduction to this book, if your building does not have a dedicated literacy expert, we designed this book also to function as a thoughtful, collaborative substitute. As an ELA teacher who may have colleagues coming to you for literacy-related advice and guidance, you can also use this book to help you in providing those supports.
While the size and scope of work in a PLC can differ greatly from one PLC to the next, the initial focus of teams often starts with a specific, discrete task that later evolves into more layered tasks and discussion topics. By simple definition, a team is a group of professionals working interdependently to achieve a common goal. PLC architect Richard DuFour (2004) notes successful teams:
▶ Have common time for collaboration on a regular basis
▶ Build buy-in toward a discrete and overarching common goal
▶ Build a sense of community
▶ Engage in long-term work that continues from year to year
▶ Grow—but do not completely change—membership each year
In addition to these characteristics, in our experience, it is helpful to have a team leader or point person who creates agendas and monitors discussion (this can be a rotating role); it is also important to encourage open, honest, discussion-based dialogue in order to respect and include all ideas concerning student learning, and we recommend that the core membership find opportunities to reach out and include other colleagues. Remember, collaborative team meetings work better when they are focused on actionable items that will serve to extend the professional learning of the teachers. The following sections go into more detail on the configuration of teams, the role of leaders within a team, and the logistics for team meetings.
Team Configuration
At this point, we want to make a few explicit recommendations for configuring teams effectively when working on literacy-based strategies. There are a number of different approaches to establishing a team, and in many schools, resources vary—for instance, at many schools, there might not be dedicated literacy experts trained in the value and capacity of literacy strategies. Sometimes we need to think of teams differently if we are thinking about how to make changes happen. Here are four considerations when building teams focused on literacy.
1. Ideally, incorporate a literacy expert on a curriculum or a content-focused team to serve as an informed thought partner. An individual with literacy expertise can help support instructional changes with a greater variety of approaches and can also help in selecting strategies that are better aligned to the course outcomes. For purposes of the ELA classroom, the literacy expert can help to adapt strategies that are focused on decoding text, summarizing text, making inferences, and exploring text extensions and connections.
2. Some teams work horizontally, meaning they work within their specific grade level or within a particular content-based course with many sections and many teachers. Some teams work vertically, where they meet with teachers from different grade levels to ensure curricula are interconnected and working to build learning year to year. When considering literacy-based strategies, consider how your teams are constructed and the purposes of your teams’ goals for integrating literacy-based strategies. Why and how should the strategies be applied to support students throughout a particular grade level or within an ELA course that many teachers instruct? When and why should a team use a strategy? If working vertically, how and why might a team teach and reteach strategies year after year? How do these strategies become habits over the sequence of courses and throughout grade levels?
3. Some teams will not have a literacy expert. In these cases, consider what other resources can serve as a strong, literacy-informed, and reflective collaborative partner. Consider the expertise that might come from within your own ELA department. Is there a teacher with experience teaching reading coursework available to come to your team meetings? If not in your building, is there a literacy expert in a building within your district—an expert in an elementary, middle, or high school building who might be able to help? Is there expertise in the special education department with a background in the area of literacy? Seek to use the resources available to you.
4. Consider how your team might make collaborative use of this book in more directed ways. Or, if you are a singleton team (a team of one), how might this book be a resource to help you reflect on your current teaching practices and help you to grow in your own learning as you seek out collaborators perhaps outside of your department or school? To improve, teams often need to seek outside resources that do not currently exist within the schools they are working in. In these cases, widen your definition of a team and consider the larger community of educators who are willing and ready to help other teachers learn. Reach out to professional organizations or attend conferences that can help connect your team to discussions that will influence positive changes.
Leaders’ Roles
Collaboration is at the crux of literacy work and is truly an essential component of professional growth. While this may seem obvious, achieving authentic collaboration can be a challenge for several reasons. We commonly hear “there isn’t time” as a primary roadblock. Consequently, the first step in the collaboration process takes place between literacy leaders and administration.
Your past experiences with using immediate strategies to address students’ most critical literacy needs provide an opportunity to approach your administrators and create a long-term plan for schoolwide literacy. The following chapters provide information and examples of how to begin this process, but here are some starting points to consider when communicating with administration and when engaging with the following chapters in this book.
▶ Identify the immediate problem and show the evidence of the problem with data.
▶ Identify your ultimate goal for the students in your classroom. Know what you want to change.
▶ Provide a list of strategies you have tried in your classroom. Identify the ways you and your team have worked to build change.
▶ Provide suggestions for resources or ideas that can help you and your team accomplish your goals and get your students to a more successful place. Collaborate with your administrators over how these goals can be accomplished with the right action steps and the right supports in place.
Teachers must be committed to the challenging work of moving students’ literacy competencies in the right direction, and leadership must support and respect this collaboration. Responding to your school’s literacy needs cannot occur through an occasional meeting or a purchased program—everyone must be in on the collaboration and be open to their own education and professional growth.
Having said that, we want to offer a few tips for literacy leaders engaged in this work. If you are the literacy leader in your school, consider yourself a host to other teaching teams. You want this team collaboration with you to be as positive as possible so everyone can be an effective participant. Often as a leader in literacy, you will need to serve as the glue that holds the pieces together. You will need to develop the agendas and send out the invites and reminders. Your personal goal is to keep this team moving forward and committed to literacy-based strategies. Be authentic: you are not the person with all the answers, and it is important that the tone is collaborative in nature and not hierarchical. The credit for the good work that comes from the focused collaborative team goes to the committee as a whole and not the literacy leader.
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