Rocky Start

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

After the late August department head retreat, the start of the school year was here in a flash. The understanding was that two weeks into the year, at the first building-focused collaboration (September 10th), the principals, literacy coaches, and department heads would be sharing the district writing goal, and the vision I shared with them at the summer department head retreat. This would give people time to think about the plan, ask questions, and consider using the district goal as their SLO up until SLOs were due, at the end of October.

One thing I appreciated about the professional development plan for the year was the way the two high school principals and I allowed time for many of the new initiatives to be the focus of the professional development times through September and October. With the exception of September 10th, every Wednesday morning was devoted to new initiatives: Framework for Teaching, Infinite Campus, Smart Boards, and ACT Aspire and WKCE teacher preparation. We thought it would be wise to devote time to the initiatives that would be on teachers’ minds early in the year, so that teachers would be ready to think about instruction and literacy by the time we kicked off on November 5th. In retrospect, that was a great idea, one that I hope we will hang onto next year, but what made the road a rocky one was that the teachers were on initiative overload. We were not all in a place where we could focus on literacy by the time November 5th rolled around.

I pulled the department heads together on October 22nd for two purposes:

• To get specific about SLOs, and how your department can engage kids in writing
• To prepare for November 5th’s disciplinary literacy kickoff

We spent most of our time talking about SLOs and looking at examples from each content area, of how we could begin to purposefully and consistently build in writing. We talked about the questions department heads brought forward from their colleagues, we talked about the data coming from English and Social Studies, we talked about teachers from each department creating their own baseline assessments, we talked and talked and talked, until every last question was discussed, and department heads had the ability to back to their colleagues and share the discussion points. It was time well-spent, but truthfully, a concern of mine was how those messages would be shared with teachers.

We also  revisited the disciplinary literacy activity I engaged them in in August, and I clarified questions, and offered troubleshooting as I modeled the roles the department heads would have facilitating on November 5th. The week of November 3rd, I went to each building, to address any last minute November 5th kickoff preparation concerns, questions, and/or anxiety of department heads. At the middle schools, the literacy coaches were facilitating this professional learning, so I felt confident that they were ready, and, therefore, did not go to each middle school for a check-in.

The kickoff went well, perhaps better than I could have imagined! The literacy coaches were excited, the teachers were seeing how they use literacy, but more importantly, recognizing that assigning it is different from engaging our students in the six literacy processes; principals were pleased with the discussions that came as a result of this activity/kickoff. One of the middle school literacy coaches wrote to me, “You made me look like brilliant today!”

Although the road along the first two months of the year were bumpy, the disciplinary literacy kickoff went well, and I was even more excited about what was to come in December: Modeling writing, using the gradual release of responsibility, by content teachers who really model writing!