Time in the Classroom: Multiple Benefits

Heather Zimmerman contributed this post. Click here for more of Heather's thinking.

I am sure we all know the overwhelming feeling of trying to balance the many directions we are pulled in as reading specialists.  Last year was the first year I was teaching reading intervention courses and also coaching.  That dreaded feeling of not doing either role justice was common for me last year.  This year though I decided to tackle that feeling with a coaching game plan.

Last school year my district implemented the Lucy Calkins’ Units of Study for Writing into middle school classrooms.  The summer before the roll-out, I worked with a small group of 8th grade teachers on various assigned tasks to prepare for the roll-out.  This helped me get a better idea of the Calkins’ curriculum, but throughout the year I started to feel as if my depth of knowledge was lacking.  This was the first curriculum roll-out I was not a part of as a teacher.  Therefore, I did not feel like I knew the Calkins’ curriculum as well as I knew the rest of our curriculum

I made a decision that this year I was going to focus on the Units of Study with the teachers. Due to schedule conflicts, my focus this year is 7th and 8th grade, and next year I will focus on 6th grade.  I felt this made sense for a few reasons, but one primary reason was that the 6th grade teachers have three literacy teachers at their level.  Therefore, they  have a built-in team of support.  The 7th and 8th grade teachers on their own islands in my school. My plan for supporting teachers with the Calkins’ curriculum was to be in their classrooms as they were teaching the units.  I planned as best as I could to go into hours where I had intervention students, so I could also support them too.  I told the teachers I wanted to learn more about the Calkins’ units, so I could better support them too.  I let them know I would be game to co-teach or work with small groups of students.  This experience has helped me as an interventionist and as a coach.  

As an interventionist, I have been better able to help my students when they have questions on assignments even when they are not in their literacy classroom.  There has been times when I have taken 5-10 minutes to talk students through a lesson from Calkins’ or helped the student through a conference during intervention.  I also have been able to support them inside the literacy classroom.

The other benefit, which is the original benefit I was expecting, I was knowing the curriculum better so I could better help support my literacy teachers.  I feel our collaboration time is much better used when I am not paging through the curriculum book or having them give me information on what the unit is about.  We have been able to talk through questions together and brainstorm ideas.

I am so happy I was able to connect with my teachers during this first unit of Calkins.  The time commitment was so well worth it. I look forward to working with them using the same plan for unit two.