Carnegie Reporter, Vol. 3, No. 1 | Literacy Coaches: An Evolving Role, page 4

The challenges of developing a literacy coaching program have been many, says Guiney, “With coaching in the picture, teachers teach in entirely different ways than they used to… so one key is that we’ve got to find just the right teachers to participate.” Some 80 percent of Boston’s literacy coaches are former teachers, Guiney reports.

She has a number of recommendations for schools that want to begin inculcating literacy coaching into their classroom. “I would start small,” she counsels. “But don’t wait too long to scale up.” She also lists these points to focus on: invest in the development of professional coaches, work closely with school organizers, ensure that school leaders buy in, get the incentives right for the coach and carve out time for the coach and teacher to work together.

In describing workshops for Boston’s teachers, Kral notes that the over-arching goal is to “deepen a child’s thinking.” Coach/teachers begin at the “pre-conference stage,” she explains and continue through debriefing. “They should leave with something to do, with a kind of assignment,” Kral adds.

Another developing story is taking place in rural Stafford County, Virginia. Nancy Guth, who has been the language arts supervisor for the county’s public schools for the past 13 years, recently received good news: school officials had endorsed funding for her literacy coaching program, including coaches at the secondary level. “It’s horrible to live on a year-by-year basis, so this is a great relief,” she says. She credits the ultimate strength of her program to a team approach, involving parents, administrators and teachers. “It was with the support of the superintendent and the superintendent for instruction that we’ve made progress. They said, ‘Okay, show us how it works,’ and we did. But once we did, they really paid attention.”

Other notable initiatives include a “Reading and Writing Studio” course in Denver that asks middle and high school students reading below grade level to read a million words a year. The students’ teachers are aided by literacy coaches who, among their duties, serve as liaisons to other subject teachers.

The Southern California Comprehensive Assistance Center of the Los Angeles County Office of Education sponsors a “Reading Success Network” that involves identifying reading coaches in all schools and school sites joining the network; the coaches are then provided with training, seminars and supports. Ruth Schoenbach and Cynthia Greenleaf, co-directors of the Strategic Literacy Initiative (SLI) of WestEd, a nonprofit educational organization headquartered in San Francisco, work with the network. Both say they’re dedicated to promoting “high rigor, high literacy, not just basic literacy.” Through the network program, they explore “how teachers think of their own lives as readers.” One area they work on is trouble-shooting. “Say you have a Scientific American article,” says Schoenbach. “We try to help our teachers determine where they themselves might have gotten stuck, what they didn’t understand. In that conversation—working out meaning—you have teachers saying, ‘Wow, there’s something here that I do understand now, and here’s why.’ In that way, you see how different people make sense of things in terms of reading.” Essentially, says Schoenbach, what they’re looking for are the different ways to really dig into a text
and then weave those methods into teaching—a concern that underpins almost every effort to give students the literacy skills they need to understand what they read, and help their teachers find ways to guide students to meet that goal.

Every Child a Graduate: A Framework for an Excellent Education for All Middle and High School Students, written by Scott Joftus, policy director of the Alliance for Excellent Education, is a relatively recent report (September 2002) that provides a snapshot of the practice of literacy coaching in California’s Long Beach Unified School District: “Each coach specializes in a specific subject—math, science, English, history—and works four days a week to mentor new teachers, model instruction methods and help select and use resources. In addition to these content coaches, the school district provides a variety of first-year teacher coaches who help inexperienced teachers learn classroom management, essential elements of effective instruction and other important skills.” In his report, Joftus also provides insight into the reaction of a young teacher in a Long Beach school taking full advantage of literacy coaching as a collaborative tool: “First-year teacher Jason Marshall’s enthusiasm suggests the positive impact the coaches have on the school: ‘I go home smiling every day,’ Marshall said. ‘I don’t feel frustrated. Just yesterday we spent a few hours picking (our history coach’s) brain and working with her to create lesson plans for the next six weeks. We’ve got clear ideas about how to tackle each lesson we’re going to be doing. I don’t feel burdened. I feel excited about coming to school.’”

Pitfalls and Sustainability
While support for literacy coaching is strong on many fronts—educators increasingly favor the practice, parents see its results—there are also pitfalls to be considered, such as the shifting definitions of coaching and the problem of sliding standards. The term “coach” can refer to volunteers, paraprofessionals or individuals holding advanced degrees.

Effective coaching also depends on school administrators’ full understanding and approval. And there is the quandary presented by school administrators who, beset by budget woes, redirect money meant for coaches into their coffers for content teachers. Yet some administrators recognize the valuable role of coaches.

“Although states have drastically reduced education budgets and are in the worst financial shape in decades, scores of literacy coaches are being hired in school districts throughout
the country,” Carnegie Corporation’s Henríquez says. “This may be happening, in part, because the No Child Left Behind Act requires school districts to provide data on students’ reading and math scores for third to eighth graders. And in high schools, every day 3,000 students drop out. Of course, the districts and the teachers feel pressure for their upper elementary and middle schools to be successful, and high schools want to ensure that young people stay engaged in school. Literacy coaching may be a way to help improve student literacy and reduce high dropout rates.”

Before embarking on a coaching program, Neufeld and Roper suggest that educators and school administrators ask themselves the following questions:

• What are our professional development goals and what do we want to accomplish with our overall professional development programs?

• What would we gain from having coaching as part of our repertoire of teacher/principal learning opportunities?

• What would coaches do to help us achieve our instructional goals?

• Are there other approaches to achieving our goals, and might they be more appropriate for us?

• What else, in addition to coaching, would we have to support to help us reach our instructional goals?

Expectations, many experts suggest, must be reasonable. Concurrently, there must be adequate support for coaches to meet their potential as contributors to the learning process. But the most critical issue—one on which virtually all stakeholders agree—is that the practice of literacy coaching will provide few long-term benefits if there isn’t secure, ongoing funding available to ensure that coaching has staying power on the educational agenda.

Next page: Two pieces of legislation have been proposed that address the need for such funding.

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