Ownership that Drives Literacy Change

The need for system-wide change is often apparent, but knowing how to navigate such comprehensive change is incredibly complex and daunting.

As an undergraduate student, I dropped out of the teacher preparation program after completing my first practicum placement. I had been partnered with a second-year teacher at a Title 1 school in a fourth-grade classroom. My partner teacher worked tirelessly to support her students, but there were too many holes in the dam, and despite our combined efforts, we were drowning.

We had ten textbooks for twenty-seven students. The copier machine that we shared with a dozen other teachers was unreliable at best. Students came into class hungry, and if they managed to bring a snack, it usually consisted of a sleeve of Oreos or a bag of Takis-- the staples in a food desert where snack machines and gas stations represented the primary food sources.

Six of our students had passed the statewide achievement test for reading in third grade, and more than half of our students were considered “well below grade-level” in reading. The broader education system offered temporary Band-Aids in the form of new programs and annual initiatives, but nothing stuck. My partner teacher tried plugging the holes in the dam with weekly trips to the grocery store for healthy snacks. She paid to print copies at her local library. She always had pencils and supplies for students to use, though they often disappeared faster than she could replenish them. I watched her Herculean efforts to quietly fill the gaps, and yet, it was never enough. At the end of the semester, I switched majors.

Several years later, I ended up back where I started. I had to learn that the most worthwhile endeavors involve choosing ownership despite overwhelm over and over again. My partner teacher knew this long before I did.

For the past four years, I have had the privilege of working alongside a team of outstanding literacy coaches and educators, as we have endeavored to support system-wide changes to literacy instruction across our state. Recent legislation has addressed the need for alignment between research, policy, and instructional practice to close gaps in literacy education. It is humbling to support the implementation of long-needed changes to reading education.

Our work involves equipping teachers, classrooms, and schools with the knowledge and resources necessary to provide evidence-based literacy instruction for all students. Sometimes this looks like helping interpret assessment data into actionable next steps. Sometimes this looks like visiting classrooms, or attending themed literacy events, or modeling how to organize flexible skill-based small groups during a 90-minute reading block. To me, it looks like my partner teacher showing up to school each day with extra pencils and healthy snacks.

Two years ago, my colleague, mentor, and dear friend, Christa Haring, approached me with an idea. She firmly believed that our experiences supporting educators and school leaders across the state needed to be shared, so that others engaged in this work could gain insight, or at the very least, they could take heart in knowing that they are not alone.

Several months later, our colleagues had drafted the first chapters of this text, Coaching the Science of Reading. Each chapter offers guiding principles gleaned from experience regarding how to navigate system-wide changes to literacy instruction from building the system’s capacity for change to implementing and sustaining changes to instructional practice.

Coaching the Science of Reading: Supporting and Sustaining Change in Evidence-Based Literacy Instruction is our invitation to show up—to support evidence-based literacy instruction for all students— and to choose ownership despite the overwhelm of change over and over again.