Please download and read the following two position statements published by the International Reading Association. After reading them, post a response here. Respond to others as well.
http://www.reading.org/resources/issues/positions_specialist.html
http://www.reading.org/resources/issues/positions_coach.html
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6 comments:
In the four years that I have served as a literacy teacher leader, my official title and responsibilities have evolved with WDS’s vision for literacy and the needs of the school. When first hired as a literacy mentor four years ago, there was no job description for my work, only a vague sense that my new role would support teachers and professional learning. My predecessors had supported students, largely in pull-out instruction, so I wrote my own job description and carved out a new niche. To some degree that role was redefined by the professional relationships I developed within the school. At times my role has also been defined by resistance to change, as well as the eagerness to improve literacy instruction and learning for children.
I have revisited these position statements many times, measuring my success against the qualifications and aspiring to live up to these high expectations. I have no doubt that our schools deserve exemplary literacy practitioners supporting teachers and students. Unfortunately, I think placing such highly skilled individuals in many schools is a significant challenge, as these positions require substantive experience at multiple grade levels, sophisticated communication, presentation, and leadership skills, and an in-depth knowledge of literacy assessment and instruction. While a traditional graduate degree literacy program may offer an avenue for acquiring a strong foundation in literacy development and instruction, the sophisticated understandings of school change, communication, and leadership skills are likely to develop in authentic school-settings with formal mentors. Forming collaboratives or regional cohort groups of literacy leaders with local universities or other educational research groups might offer the necessary job-embedded professional development that literacy professionals need.
When the authors noted that “education reform is riddled with examples of potentially powerful interventions that disappoint reformers and fail the students…”, I wonder to what extent the underfunding of schools and NCLB contributes to the disparity in the preparedness of literacy professionals. Most of my own professional learning has been at my own expense with little monetary rewards offered. My eagerness to provide high quality learning for my students must be measured against my own family needs. I believe that significant school reform is dependent upon our ability to remove obstacles to learning and to provide and create effective professional learning opportunities for all teachers.
Jill's comment speaks to the difficulty of building the capacity that makes hiring reading specialists and reading coaches meeting the high standards represented by these IRA position statements possible. It is easy to agree with the standards in those statements. At the secondary level, where I have experience, the reality is that high school teachers have virtually no formal training in reading support or instruction. Special Ed. teachers have some, but often Special Ed instruction does not call for application of those specialized skills on a regular basis, and the skills, to the extent they are taught, can be lost or not be developed. This means that change at the secondary level is likely to be slow.
I am fortunate to to have on staff a skilled teacher with a fascination for reading and a willingness to secure the necessary training to become a reading specialist. She will be our first reading specialist starting this fall. she will be working with our most struggling readers, but a good amount of time has been left free in her schedule that she can work with teachers. With her network of connections developed over years of teaching here, I look forward to the impact she can have, but I know it will be slow. All of the credentials in the world won't matter without an audience firmly committed and convined that students at the high school level need help with reading comprehension.
I was quite impressed and more than a little daunted by the IRA's stipulations about the necessary qualifications of the reading specialist and the reading coach. I completely agree with all the qualifications. For that matter, I completely agree with the case the IRA makes for having reading coaches. After all, I am in this course and it was only a soft-sell for me.
However, I think Jill effectively described the reality of the situation, at least in Maine. Reading specialists are still quite new. And in high schools they are downright rare. As I stated when we met, I tried to hire a literacy specialist at my school and got NO applicants. I suspect that as more and more schools pursue literacy instruction and as RTI takes firm root this will begin to change. But the likelihood of finding an individual as qualified as the IRA says is necessary is low.
On the plus side, I appreciated having the information in these documents that describe what reading specialists and coaches must do. They might be a soft-sell for me but when hiring one means reassigning limited human resources they are a harder sell for my faculty, my superintendent, and my school board. I plan on accessing parts of this document if I ever have to more actively convince others why we need a reading specialist.
Finally, like Jeff I am fortunate to have a few teachers who are interested in taking an active role in literacy development. In fact, I have a math, a social studies, an English, a science, and a special education teacher as well as a librarian who self-selected to participate in ongoing literacy training last year. Thank goodness for these people!
I agree that the IRA lists some su bstantial standards to follow. Tall orders indeed! As we develop the positions of coach and/or specialist, the standards can guide the job descriptions and can help form the people in the roles in terms of their PD. Some standards could easily become goals for professioanl practice. The network piece is an important one. Being the only literacy specialist in a school (or even a district) is challenging. The emotional and professional support of others is important. Jill, do you have such a network to tap into? A school's literacy team (the ones who are already "on the bus" to borrow a term from the book Good to Great)may be an internal support.
Much is being written about the roles of the reading specialist and coach because of the Reading First initiative and the ability of receivinbg districts to hire staff in these capacities. For further reading, check out work by Rita Bean and Jennifer Allen, as well as the Vogt text.
I wonder why the articles use the term reading specialist - it seems to reinforce the stereotype of a reading teacher working with elementary children in a pull-out setting. i will write more when i am sure this posting will work. i have been having much trouble getting to you all on line.
OK, I am finally on and with you all! Hooray.
As I was saying, as a secondary teacher it is very hard to get folks to see the need for a "reading specialist" because folks picture a middle aged woman in dowdy clothing and bifocals pulling little kids into a resource room. Even literacy is hard. Though folks will agree that students need help with their reading and writing, they still think of literacy as reading with little kids. Is there a better term?
The graphic organizer on page three of the position statement looked lovely and organized, as if the job and tasks at hand in instruction, assessment and leadership could be done in a neat and tidy fashion. Truth is, it seems to me that the job at hand, if it is to be done successfully, is a great deal like living a fulfilling life - on paper it is nearly impossible to have and do all that you would like (especially if it involves children), but people do it all the time. As Jill notes, the personal cost to fulfill the tall order of the reading specialist may be too high - on paper. But my experience tells me that the synergy of success gives you more than you could have ever 'paid out'. The other truth is the successes are small and often unheralded for some time.
I have been operating at level I (according to the qualifications article) for the last few years, but my focus has been scattered. At boarding school there are no specialists - your greatest strength is the skills of the generalist. I have been making sure people can teach, coach, build a community, run a dorm, talk with parents, ID and go after an attitude. I would really like to move to level II, and I find that my experience with and understanding of assessment may be my Achilles heel. There is still a great deal I feel I do not know. I have questions about grades vs standards based assessment. In fact, I think numeric grades as a language of assessment do not fit our school at all. Additionally, i know so little about the NWEAs, RIT scores and such - all those acronyms. Do those types of assessments have real value or are public school teachers just learning to live with them?
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