Addressing. Our Shortcomings

School Administrator, Sept, 1997 by Tom Heineman, Gerrie Dunphy

A district devises a systemic staff development program to improve its reading instruction

One exciting aspect of our jobs in the Livermore Valley Joint Unified School District is meeting with every newly hired teacher. While the enthusiasm they bring to their classrooms is contagious, they also came to their new assignments lacking a critical tool: how to best teach reading.

In our welcoming interviews, it became increasingly evident that the newcomers lacked background about teaching reading skills and an appreciation of good literature.

We decided to expand our inquiry by interviewing all elementary school teachers who had been hired by our district during the previous five years. Most of them identified a need to be better prepared to teach reading. It was obvious we had a districtwide problem.

Impending Crisis

By identifying a lack of confidence in our teachers' skills in reading instruction, our survey pointed to a pending instructional crisis just over the horizon. With many experienced teachers retiring and their replacements poorly prepared to teach reading, the call to action was loud and clear.

Our report detailing these findings was shared with the superintendent and the 11 elementary school principals. To address the shortcomings, the district decided to offer a comprehensive staff development program on teaching reading for all elementary teachers, the newly hired as well as the experienced teachers.

We developed a plan to prepare all of our teachers with the ability to meet the reading needs of our students. First, we had to identify those who would participate in the training. We asked who must be involved, who should be involved and who might be interested?

Our target audience, teachers, was required to be involved. Building principals also had to be involved since they are ultimately responsible for the success of all programs at the school site. Since district administrators responsible for curriculum and instruction frequently work with the sites, they were included in all the trainings.

We decided the resource specialist and bilingual resource teachers should be involved since they work closely with the classroom teachers in providing reading intervention strategies for students. School board members, visiting school district representatives, student teachers and parents who demonstrated interest were allowed to view at least one of the training sessions.

Ongoing Change

A review of the literature supported the importance of having learning support teams. Based upon the research, we first decided that each of the 11 elementary schools would send a team of four teachers, plus the principal, to the initial training.

The second important strategy was to schedule the pace of learning over 30 weeks. This translated into five actual training sessions and allowed the team to discuss and try out ideas presented at the sessions. Modeling with students was incorporated into the training so that the teachers could see how to apply the ideas in a classroom.

Finally, the training recognized the importance of supporting the participants. This was accomplished by purchasing the resources that were highly recommended by the trainers, but which had not been provided in the past. These included Beginning to Read by M.J. Adams, Making Words by P.M. Cunningham, Words Their Way by D.R. Bear, Words by M.K. Henry and Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning About Print by Steven A. Stahl, Jean Osborn and Fran Lehr.

At each session, teachers selected one resource, which was distributed at the following session. This demonstrated the district's commitment to the staff and the program. We provided catered lunches so participants would have informal time to discuss the application of the new ideas. This time was valuable because the discussions were immediate and informal.

External Expertise

The next step was the selection of a training program. We decided the outcome of the training was to increase the ability of the classroom teacher to work with children in their classrooms. A group of administrators and teachers reviewed and visited various training programs. In the end, one program was selected to be offered to all elementary school principals and teacher representatives: Consortium for Reading Excellence, run by San Francisco State University.

We found the CORE program exciting because its leaders shared a philosophy similar to ours regarding what is required to support long-term, instructional change. The program is based on the recommendations from the state of California's task force report, "Every Child a Reader." This program proposes a balanced reading program that is research based and systematic and combines skill development with literature and language-rich activities.

During the months of September through November of 1995, we met with CORE leaders to develop the ongoing reading program for the Livermore schools. The program components were:

* training in phonemic awareness and systematic, explicit phonics instruction;