What Do You Do Anyway?

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

My school district has 16 elementary schools, and within each school we have building coaches.  Many coaches are 50% coach and 50% interventionist.  I serve as the K-2 District Literacy Coach.  We also have a 3-6 and 7-12 District Literacy Coach.  Last year’s professional development targeted best practices through the workshop model.  All building coaches received training.

Appleton Area School District Literacy Coach Job Descriptions

This year we plan to focus our professional development on specific needs within each building.  We (District Literacy Coaches) are committed to meeting with our building coaches on a bi-monthly basis.  

As we work with our coaches we find that the staff in their building are uncertain about the purpose of literacy coaching and often question their role.  Some teachers might ask “What do you do anyway?”  We want to make certain our coaches are equipped with the information they need to address this question.  Our district has put together a job description for Literacy Coaches, but that is not necessarily what classroom teachers are looking for.  Classroom teachers want to know how a coach can support their work in the classroom.  Teachers need to understand how they might work with a coach and how that will benefit them.

Rubric: Components of Workshop

The first thing we recommended was for the coaches to submit a needs survey to their teachers.  We created a rubric which reflects the components of the workshop model.  The rubric asks teachers to look at the components and rate themselves based on how confident they feel in each area.  We felt that this would be a great way for coaches to get a sense of the teachers and their interests and needs.

Literacy Coaching Continuum

We also shared the Literacy Coaching Continuum with our building coaches.  The continuum's differentiated formats of professional learning acknowledge that teachers are individuals who need and want various kinds of support depending upon content, circumstances, personal experience, and timing (Moran & Powers).  Just like we differentiate for students, we also need to differentiate for our teachers.  We recommended that our coaches share the Coaching Continuum with their teachers. We suggested they ask their teachers where on the continuum they would like support.  The Coaching Continuum seemed to lift the weight of trying to be everything for everyone.  They were now able to build on their strengths as a coach as well as the needs of the teacher.