Sharing with Department Heads

Lisa Weiss contributed today's post. For more information, read Lisa's first post about her district's "laser-like focus on the intentional use of literacy in the service of our contents."

How does one go about sharing such a vision with high school department heads? Like all teaching: thoughtfully and intentionally. It is a common practice for department head retreat to be held each summer. This year I was given the better part of a day to share the thinking behind a number of literacy-related items.

A number of years ago I was a literacy coach at one of the high schools, so I feel as though, because I had relationships with many of the department heads at that school, and some successful coaching and professional development experiences behind me there, I’d have a somewhat receptive audience. On the flip side of that sun-shiny thinking is the realist in me--the part of me that fully understands that the topic of literacy is not one that all will embrace--even if they respect or like me, and...I had another set of department heads who never heard my name, didn’t know my agenda, how I operate as a literacy coach, nor as a literacy coordinator!

I admit, I was nervous, because I had all kinds of information that was going to be new thinking for the group, and the level of receptivity was going to vary, but I also felt confident because my plan was solid, simple, and one that I thought would be appealing to most teachers. The agenda for the day included starting with a self-reflective set of questions that had the department heads thinking about how often they want and/or require their students to be engaged in literacy processes.

After that short, but powerful activity, I got the group moving and thinking more about the kinds of literacy that are used in their individual content courses by engaging them in a carousel brainstorm. I split the group of 40-45 teachers and administrators into six different groups, each group representing one of the six literacy processes: reading, writing, listening, speaking, viewing, and graphically representing. Each group had an opportunity to think and write, for approximately 5 minutes, about how they engaged kids in each one of the literacy processes, and then, with the walls full of ideas surrounding us,  we debriefed the process, which led to a working definition of what is meant by disciplinary literacy--what it is, and what it is not.

Here are some of the disciplinary literacy talking points we discussed:

• Something you already are doing--it was important to the administrators for me to continually show the department heads, throughout the day, how they are already engaging kids in literacy processes, so it did not feel as this is, yet another, entirely new initiative.
• Something we will work to do systematically, consistently, and with intentionality. It was clear from the carousel brainstorm that our students are using literacy processes in content courses, but now, as teachers, we are going to think about engaging students in these processes frequently, with purpose, and supporting students with this work.
• Something we require of students because “using literacy in the service of your content” is how we help students to process your content goals. (Doug Buehl)
• You are not being asked to teach English for the ELA teachers, or to “help out” the ELA teachers. We discussed how the writing of a lab conclusion differs from writing a character analysis, and how that differs from a cause and effect paper, and how that differs from a reflection on a performance, so that the point was that you model and teach students how to write in your class so your expectations are made visible, so that kids see you muddle through the messy work of modeling writing, and so that students see how the kind of writing you are asking for is different and similar to what they write in ELA. It’s about effective communication of your course content via literacy processes!
• You are not being asked to ditch your content so that kids can start reading novels or writing essays in place of your content. An example was that if you teach physical education, you are still going to require students to participate in the physical activity your content standards require, however, the writing you could engage kids in is of a reflective nature, using the data from food and exercise logs to reflect upon goals being met (or not), and setting new goals. We are not asking for radical changes in your curriculum, just thoughtful ones that require your students to make sense of content while using literacy as the processing tool!

Next post: Other highlights from the department head retreat, and the rest of the agenda