Karen+Burden's+NLI11+Teacher+Leadership+PlanKaren+Burden's+NLI11+Teacher+Leadership+Plan


 * Teacher Leadership Plan **
 * ECI 509—New Literacies Teacher Leader Institute 2011 **
 * Karen B. Burden **

As I shared a couple of times during the institute last week, I am transitioning this summer from the role of a high school English teacher to that of a secondary literacy coach in my school system. After having taught for the past thirty years in three different Wake County public high schools(Cary HS 1981-1997, Southeast Raleigh Magnet HS 1997-2006, and Holly Springs HS 2006-2011), I am assuming the role of working to improve the literacy in all content areas in the two Wake County high schools to which I have been assigned: Cary HS again and Fuquay-Varina HS. I am assuming this role without any formal training as a literacy coach, but I do have a background in reading and writing as an English teacher, and I am a candidate for the NLGL graduate degree at NCSU; both experiences offer components that will contribute to my new work. I am also an auto-didact and will be relying on professional materials I have collected and will continue to collect to learn about my new work. I am also fortunate to work in a school system that offers frequent and quality staff development which I will be attending with as much regularity as I can(including two workshops I’ve been taking this summer: Foundations of Reading and RIAL—Reading Interventions for Adolescent Learners).
 * __ Context __**

In addition, the question that has driven all of my experiences in learning new literacies has been my desire to understand how these literacies reinforce and promote the “traditional” literacies and the 21st century learning framework. Generally, these connections are quite clear; the power and value of the new literacies do frequently show innovative ways to learn and to show learning. In other cases, those links are not as clear. I also worry about teachers who may use these tools ineffectively or inappropriately, perhaps unknowingly. In addition to extending my comfort level with these new tools, I’d like to also expand my knowledge of these tools’ best uses and limitations. In other words, I do not want to promote them and even employ them in my own work until I know their unequivocal effectiveness as a tool for authentic learning. I hope I don’t sound suspicious of their viability, but I am cautious and feel that I need to be armed with knowledge and experience before I go about promoting them as effective learning tools.

I have four areas in which I plan to implement my learning from the institute in a staff development format.
 * __ Teacher Leadership Plan: Possibilities __**

1) I am currently planning a staff development session for Fuquay-Varina HS that will be conducted on Thursday, August 18, 2011. I have met with the school's administration three times since early July. They conveyed to me at the first meeting an interest in focusing on Writing Across the Curriculum. I was charged with moving forward with a plan of action. At our last meeting, I presented to them two proposals: a Writing-to-Learn module and a Prewriting module. In both cases, I delineated the workshop's format and preliminary content. They chose the Writing-to-Learn module as the first one with the Prewriting one to take place on September 16th during the first early-release day of the school year.

I am working now on the WTL module specifics. There will be five stations which will run concurrently in the school's Media Center with each presentation being repeated five times. The staff will be divided into five groups and will spend ten minutes at each station before "travelling" to the next one. Each station will focus on a category of WTL activities: note-taking strategies, journals and logs, content vocabulary/definitions, summaries and paraphrasing, and entry/exit activities. At each station, the teachers will view a short 3-4 minute video presentation on that area. They will then review handouts on that strategy that will provide for them multiple strategies in that category from which they can chose. They will then move on to the next station for the next category until they have covered all five. At the end, when they are back together in a large group, they will be required by the school's principal to select 3-5 strategies that they will implement immediately in the classroom when the school year starts.

I am currently preparing all the materials for this module. I will do a 5 minute overview in a large group before the module begins that will answer these questions: What is WTL/ What kinds of activities constitute WTL? Why should a teacher take the time to use WTL strategies? How do I grade WTL activites. I will be preparing the videos to show at each station. I plan to use a variety of digital tools to present them including Animoto, PhotoStory, VoiceThread, and Voki. I am using these tools for two reasons: a) I can't be at five stations at once and b) I want to infuse digital tools as much as possible in my work. I will also be preparing the handouts for each station. When all of this work is complete, I will post it to this wiki for others to access.

The Prewriting module that I will conduct in September is in its initial planning stages obviously, but it will include these five areas: possible formats, potential audiences, gathering information, organizational tools, and thesis formation. I suspect it will be conducted in a similar fashion, but until I am informed of the time constraints, I am unable to flesh it out in any more detail. I do plan though to continue to employ digital tools.

I am also working on a one-hour afternoon staff devleopment activity on the "cool tools" which I plan to offer at both schools. Both principals have told me I can offer any workshop I wish; they will be happy to promote it and provide me the meeting space and equipment I may need. Again, I'm so early in my work that I can only give my hopes, but if things go according to plan, I will offer one of these "cool tool" sessions once a quarter with attendance on a volunteer basis. As I continue to work with the teaching staff of both my schools throughout the upcoming school year, I will actively seek opportunities to model new literacies. I am slated to work weekly with PLC teams, department chairs and their teachers, and the whole staff at both of my schools in leading literacy-related staff developments. It is my full intention to incorporate literacy strategies at every appropriate moment.

2) As a member of Wake County’s cadre of secondary literacy coaches, I will interact with that group often and in particular at our one-a-month meetings/staff development sessions. I have already had a couple of conversations with my supervisor to discuss the possibility of leading a session about new literacies and digital tools at one or more of these meetings. Some members of my group are already immersed in these tools, but my supervisor has indicated that she along with most of the rest of the group is less familiar and certainly unaware of their potential for enhancing students’ literacy. While we were discussing the possibility of a workshop-type module I would lead, my supervisor also toyed with the idea of having a “new literacies” component to each of our monthly meetings rather than a one-shot deal so to speak. She and I are actually engaged in a digita lconversation this week on this idea and plan to finalize our idea before the team’s next meeting on August 10th. If she accepts my proposal, I plan to create a series of mini-modules that will be part of the regular agenda of the secondary literacy coach meetings that will focus on the following topics:
 * What is meant by the term “new literacy?” (I hope to establish the difference between and the connection with the traditional literacies so that teachers see these tools as a way of teaching the same skills as well as the 21st century framework skills but in a new way that will engage students more.)
 * What skills are embedded in these tools? (I seek to increase teachers' comfort levesl with these new tools so that they will feel more comfortable working with students.)
 * What are some of the most common of these tools? (I will start with the most user-friendly and free tools like Animoto and Voki just to get "their feet wet.")
 * How do these tools work? (I will teach them myself and reteach as needed as well as point them to tutorials.)
 * What tools work best for what learning outcomes? (This area is weak for me as a teacher, so I will be experimenting with different tasks with varied tools so that I can answer this question with confidence.)
 * How do these tools contribute to a student’s literacy? (To me, this is my key question and will most definitely be the question I encounter from resistant teachers.)
 * How can you convince an unwilling teacher to try to implement a new tool in his/herclassroom? (As referenced above, the skeptic will need real proof these tools engage learners as well as teach skills.)
 * What obstacles prevent or inhibit the use of these tools and what can be done about these obstacles? (I'm going to have to be armed to deal with the obstacles and show routes around them. I suspect I'll be working the technology contacts in schools as well as doing some of the "leg" work for teachers to save them frustration and effort.)

When she reaches her decision, I will begin to be more specific in my planning and delineate the mini-modules per her direction. I have no doubt that my colleagues will be interested in this subject and will then be in a position to the train the teachers at their schools in the new literacies. I truly think that my work with my fellow literacy coaches has the potential to reach a wide audience of teachers.

3) As noted earlier, I am just beginning my work as a secondary literacy coach, so I haven’t delineated my entire work plan just yet. However, I have noted that many coaches produce some kind of a periodic communication with their teachers in order to promote literacy in general. I am considering the following communication options to extend my leadership:


 * A digital newsletter that would be sent to the teaching staffs of my schools on a monthly basis, a portion of which will be dedicated to new literacies in particular. I am going to try to avoid a paper newsletter, but until I get in my schools and discover that school’s preferred mode of communication, I won’t know what format works best.
 * A blog, ning, or website in which I post electronically the same kinds of information I might include in a digital or paper newsletter. This format would allow my readers to link more easily to websites I might choose to highlight and facilitate a discussion about digital tools.
 * I may ask for a “literacy moment” or update at each month’s faculty meetings. These types of interactions must be brief, and as a result, are often ineffective. My challenge would be to introduce a tool or idea of such potency that teachers would listen and want to know more. Using the tool to present the information would be imperative I think.

4) I have identified two English teachers, one at each of my schools, who are ready to implement a digital tool for assessment as soon as possible. One teacher is planning to complete a project with her Paideia students, but she has not yet had an opportunity to talk with her teaching partner yet. I too have not met him since school has not yet started. The other teacher wants to ask her Advanced Placement students to use a a digital tool to share their annotations of complex text. She and I have a meeting scheduled during the week of August 22nd to form the plan of action. I have been told that I will be doing a great deal of work with individual teachers and am excited that some of my initial work will involve digital tools. I certainly hope to expand this kind of opportunity.

I have a strong feeling that I am going to be afforded more opportunities than I can conceive of at this juncture to demonstrate and share the learning I gained at last week’s institute. I stand ready to learn more and share as much as is feasible.