Help! I’m a Literacy Coach and It’s the First Day of School

Today's post is brought to you by Julie Schwartzbauer.

How appropriate to have our first blog be about building relationships with our teachers.  

A week before school started, I was meeting with some of our building Literacy Coaches.  We were planning staff development for the week that teachers come back.  This is usually a very busy time for our coaches.  As we were sitting in my 2nd floor office with no air conditioning on a 90 degree day, one of our new coaches asked, “I am wondering, after next week, what am I supposed to do?  She went on by saying, “I am feeling very useful now, but I am afraid that once school starts, teachers will see me sitting in my office pretending to be busy.” One of our veteran coaches then commented, “I am not really sure how to start the year as a coach either.”

Of course I went into rescue mode telling them, “Don’t worry! I’ll help you.”   After they all left, I knew I needed to act fast. After all, the start of school was only a week away!  My wonderful colleague and I started to brainstorm ideas of how we could help our new and veteran coaches.

We came up with an idea for a professional development session with our coaches.  We titled it “Help! I’m a Literacy Coach and It’s the First Days of School.”  We truly pride ourselves in coming up with unique titles for our staff development sessions.

As our coaches gathered in our office we started by having them do a quick write on what literacy coaching means to them.  It was not meant to be shared – but as a way to self-reflect.

We then felt that we needed to define the role of a Literacy Coach.

In the WSRA position statement, “The Wisconsin State Reading Association believes the role of the literacy coach is to provide professional development for staff in the implementation of best practices in reading and writing instruction throughout all curricular areas.”

What does that actually look like, and what does that mean for a coach at the start of the year?  I know that it’s unrealistic to think that all coaches will be working side by side with teachers during those first few weeks of school.  So, what can they be doing?

We split our coaches into groups and asked them to each read a different short article on coaching.  The conversation that came from those articles produced a consensus that in these first few weeks and even months, their job would consist of building relationships with their teachers.

One might ask - How do they do that?

The first thing a coach might do in order to begin building relationships is to LEAVE THEIR OFFICE!  That’s right, get out of the office, leave the emails, and messages behind.  Attend professional learning communities.  Engage teachers in conversation.   Ask a lot of questions, and spend time listening.  Talk about teaching.  Talk about students.  Talk about family.  Talk about what interests them.  Find out what their strengths are.  Your goal is to build trust with your staff.  I wish you all the best of luck.