Woodbine Elementary School teachers attended a workshop on Balanced Literacy at the Serna Center that had more trainers than participants. It also lasted six hours when it could have been completed in half that time. What are you doing about this?
The Balanced Literacy approach to language arts is already improving student performance in our district, and SCUSD is planning to take this successful approach to all schools. To do so, the district needs to build the capacity of its staff, meaning develop teachers, staff, administrators and others who are well-versed in Balanced Literacy and who can teach others. To this end, we have included district instructional support staff in trainings so they can provide on-going coaching support and facilitate Balanced Literacy in years to come. These instructional coaches are skilled, veteran classroom teachers from our schools who are working with sites to develop “best practices” in all areas of teaching and learning.
This will help us reduce and/or eliminate the need for external contractors. Site leaders have also begun professional development on Balanced Literacy to learn about instructional leadership to support implementation.
As we gather feedback on our professional development programs, we are making adjustments to reflect concerns of participants. This includes examining the length of Balanced Literacy workshops.
