Literacy Now

“Any questions?” asked a member of our district leadership team at our quarterly meeting. I braved the silence and looks from my colleagues that were meant to hush me, and raised my hand. I stood up and asked, “What path is available for those of us in coordinator and coaching positions?”

She did not have an answer.

Literacy coaches, reading specialists, and literacy coordinators all have an important place in U.S. schools. ILA’s research brief, “The Multiple Roles of School-Based Specialized Literacy Professionals,” coined a new term to represent all of these roles: the specialized literacy professional. While ILA specifically refers to school-based professionals, district-level literacy professionals also provide a wealth of knowledge to districts, schools, teachers, and students. Because my experience has been at the school and district level, I know that these professionals are not always able to increase their content knowledge unless they pursue learning experiences on their own.

The literacy professional for a school (or school district) is often the first person sought out for advice, strategies, data review, or observation. In order to provide effective coaching and assistance, these literacy professionals need to continue to develop their own skillsets and stay abreast of the latest literacy research. If the school or the district is not providing professional development opportunities, literacy professionals must find them independently. This can be time consuming and overwhelming if you do not know what to look for.

Literacy professionals should first complete a self-assessment to determine their areas of strength and weakness. The Literacy Clearinghouse provides an easy-to-score self-assessment for elementary literacy professionals that would be a great starting point. Meeting with other literacy professionals in the area is another way to expand your skillset; you can each present on your most proficient areas (based on self-assessment results) and learn from one another.

To be a successful literacy professional, you have to continue to evolve and grow, just as we expect of teachers and students. Seek this evolution and growth on your own, if necessary. Children are depending on it.

Turkesshia Moore is a literacy specialist with Wilson Language Training. She most recently served as a K-5 literacy coordinator in Greensboro, NC. She is currently pursuing her Ed.S. Degree in Educational Leadership. Her interests include the relationship between parental involvement and student achievement, providing adequate funding and effective instruction in rural communities, and the effect of generational dispositions of education on current student achievement.

A boy’s father is his first hero. Not only does the son look up to his father as his role model, but he also looks to his father for guidance. A child watches his father’s every move. He is watching when the father is aware. He is watching when the father is not aware. Sons imitate their fathers far more often than fathers wish to admit.

For children, actions speak louder than words. In schools where African American boys may show little to no interest in reading, imitation can be a positive force in their reading success.

Research shows that a boy who has a father as a reading role model during his early literacy years is more likely to develop the behaviors of a literate person. This fact creates a powerful charge for a father as a reading role model. Although a father who promotes reading can change his son’s entire future, some boys lack father figures in their homes. School administrators and literacy leaders can still reap the benefits of black male reading role models by adding African American dads to their literacy programs at schools. School administrators and literacy leaders can celebrate the idea that black male students can identify with other black males who are willing to serve as reading role models.

Below are three simple ideas to get started:

• Promote the idea of community. In the book Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Spiegel & Grau), Coates explores the "beautiful burden" an African American father has in educating his son. This beautiful burden is one the entire male community can shoulder. Reach out to the dads in your community to encourage their involvement in literacy programs.

• Invite African American dads to share their stories. A father who didn’t like reading as a young person may still show a reluctance for reading as an adult. Invite fathers to the classroom to tell stories and share experiences. In my work as a literacy leader, I was able to find male relatives of a former Harlem Globetrotter, a Tuskegee Airman, and a Buffalo Soldier. These men shared stories that were passed down to them by these great men in history. As the literacy leader, I found books that dovetailed these experiences and ask the guests to read them to the class as side dishes to their stories.
• Promote literacy through short pieces. Poetry is a fun form of expression. Hold a poetry slam night and promote the likes of Gil Scott-Heron, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Countee Cullen. And don’t overlook our contemporaries like Tupac Shakur and Will Smith. Men tend to be attracted to short literary pieces that pack big punches.

You can access the content you need for themed literacy programs on sites such as The Poetry Foundation, Poem Hunter, and All Poetry. In order to find the men in your community who wish to get involved in your literacy program, distribute a survey. Celebrate the volunteers by promoting them on your literacy website. It doesn't hurt to offer food, either! 

With a little effort, a literacy leader can fill the literacy program with dads who are eager and willing to share their stories. 

Rachel Slaughter is a doctoral candidate specializing in literacy education at Widener University in Pennsylvania. Her research interest centers on promoting reading in African American males with the help of African American males as reading role models.

Rachel Slaughter will present a session titled “Add African American Dads to your Literacy Programs and Watch Magic Happen” at the ILA 2017 Conference & Exhibits, held in Orlando, FL, July 15–17. For more information, download the ILA 2017 Conference & Exhibits app or visit ilaconference.org/app.

Graphic novels, video games, blogs, and more. With the growing list of media choices to use in your literacy teaching, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. How do you narrow down your options to figure out what’s best for you and your students? And what are the best ways to use this media to support literacy and language arts development over time?

In our work as classroom teachers and literacy researchers, we’ve learned that different kinds of media come with important considerations for how to choose and use them effectively in your teaching practice. Though we continue to learn more every day, we’d like to share what we’ve gathered so far.

Social media: Considering students’ everyday writing practices

Social media can be effective for broadening the space of the classroom, as it allows for an increased, potentially interactive audience wherein the students are largely in charge of creating and designing content. In my research, I have explored how students can use varying social media platforms for writing and have found that students seem to use social media platforms differently based on their understanding of the classroom norms in conjunction with their understanding of the platforms. For example, students tend to write more formally when designing websites but less formally and more personally when creating blog posts or posting to Instagram. It is important to consider the goals of the unit when selecting a platform as these will likely affect how the students write within that platform.

Video games: Bridging virtual worlds and life experiences

Leverage students’ enthusiasm by asking them to connect their gameplay to topics covered in class. For example, a number of teachers have engaged students who are passionate about Pokémon Go by connecting the game to important topics such as biology, geography, and literature. A different approach, however, is to examine the practices of students around video games and other digital media and to use those as points for discussion. The ways that students research and learn online about a game like Pokémon Go, for example, could spark a discussion about Internet literacy and how to tell which sources are reliable.

Visual media: More than just a motivator

It might be tempting to select visual media in the hopes of engaging apathetic students. However, visual media is not the proverbial magic bullet of education. Rather, it comes with its own challenges and can prove frustrating for students unfamiliar with approaching these texts analytically. I’ve watched students quit reading a graphic novel because the images were too chaotic for them to process. That said, preparing students with the terminology and functionality of the medium can go a long way in supporting their literacy experiences. In comics, what is a gutter and what does it do? In film, what distinguishes between a fade and a cut and why do they matter? When students have these tools, they are better prepared to view and discuss these texts.

Literacy educators have the power to transform the way students engage with texts across all kinds of media forms. We hope these thoughts will help you take your own literacy practice to the next level.

Earl Aguilera is a former high school English teacher, K–12 reading specialist, and current doctoral student at Arizona State University. His research focuses on the role of new media literacies for students learning through and about digital technologies.

Olivia G. Stewart is graduating from Arizona State University, where she focused on digital literacies and literacy practices while using digital technologies. Her dissertation work reflected these interests as she studied how students use varying social media platforms for writing and how these uses effect “what counts as writing” in students’ increasingly digital literacy practices.

Kelly M. Tran is a researcher of games and learning. She is particularly interested in the communities around games and the informal teaching and learning that occurs between players.

Dani Kachorsky is a former high school English language arts teacher whose love of comics, film, and young adult literature led her to put these visual media in a place of prominence in her classroom instruction. Her experiences in the classroom influenced her research interests in visual and multimodal literacy.

Earl Aguilera, Olivia G. Stewart, Kelly M. Tran, and Dani Kachorsky will present a panel discussion titled “Beyond the ‘Fakebook’ Profile: Engaged and Purposeful Literacy Instruction Using Alternative Media” at the ILA 2017 Conference & Exhibits, held in Orlando, FL, July 15–17.

ILA has partnered with Heinemann Publishing to broadcast its first-ever social justice panel, “Disrupting a Destructive Cycle: How Literacy Drives Social Change,” through Facebook Live on Saturday, July 15 from 2:00–4:00 PM ET. The panel will be moderated by Nikole Hannah-Jones, an investigative reporter covering racial injustice for The New York Times Magazine.

Cornelius Minor, lead staff developer at the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, will open the event, which is inspired by an on-the-fly discussion he led at the ILA 2016 Conference & Exhibits. ILA 2016 took place just days after the Alton Sterling shooting in Baton Rouge, LA, and the Dallas, TX, murder of several police officers gunned down in a seemingly retaliatory effort. Minor engaged attendees in an impromptu conversation to demonstrate how teachers should talk about emotionally charged and controversial topics.

Hannah-Jones will deliver a short keynote before diving into the discussion.

Panelists include Minor; Monita K. Bell, senior editor of Teaching Tolerance; Deborah S. Delisle, executive director and CEO of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development; Zareen Jaffery, executive editor of Salaam Reads; Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, assistant professor in the Literacy, Culture, and International Education Division at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education; and Gene Luen Yang, (U.S.) National Ambassador for Young People's Literature.

The conversation will explore how educators can confront complex social issues such as racially motivated violence and cultural intolerance in the classroom, in addition to looking at the role of literacy as a key agent of civic engagement and social change. Hannah-Jones says she hopes that educators who attend will leave with a set of tools they can use to facilitate constructive conversations and empower their students to promote social justice.

Those interested in participating can visit the event page to learn more and to RSVP. To tune in, visit our Facebook page at the time of the event. Interested, but have conflicting plans? The full recording will be archived on our Facebook page.

Alina O’Donnell is the editor of Literacy Daily.

Being in Boston for the ILA 2016 conference was an extremely exciting learning opportunity for me. Although I had to travel more than 5,000 miles from Nigeria—and I was seven months pregnant at the time—it was worth every second.

I crossed several hurdles, including fundraising to cover expenses so I could attend—and present on the work of my social enterprise, Magical Books—but it’s the sessions I attended and resources I received that made the conference so memorable.

It has all aided my work with children over this past year in a country where reading for pleasure is not often promoted and most students read simply to pass exams. I aim to change that, and so I can’t wait to return for ILA 2017 to again be among so many like-minded literacy educators.

At the general session last year, I listened to Adora Svitak talk about the power of literature in teaching empathy and to Kwame Alexander talk about how to make poetry relatable, enjoyable, and accessible for children. I am also glad to have attended Pernille Ripp’s session on strategies to engage all learners, mainly that students shouldn’t be compelled to use reading logs, as this stifles the fun and limits the number/volume of books they want to read.

Teaching practices and instructional strategies that position students closer to reading and writing excellence by Kelly Gallagher was another session that inspired me. Now, I allow children to make their choice regarding the books they want to read irrespective of the volume and also model through mentor texts how students can be better writers. In addition, I take time to confer with students on their progress and challenges, to engage them with high-interest topics, to give lots of low-pressure ungraded writing, to write alongside them, and to encourage them to write for an audience.

Tiffany Todd’s session “60 Apps in 60 Minutes” was very engaging and eye opening. In fact, we were able to make a list of 100 apps. I was probably familiar with about two before the session, but now I know about Story Creator, Quizlet, AutoRap, readwritethink.org, africanstorybook.org, and 95 others.

I found the session “From Phonics to Fluency to Proficient Reading” by Timothy Rasinski enlightening, especially because at Magical Books, we organize literacy clinics for struggling readers. One of the things I learned was that automaticity and increase in reading speed is gained through reading more and often. I have also found the “making and working words” and “vocabulary ladders” lesson plans very useful in improving students’ reading level and vocabulary.

I continue to be excited by the resources I received and, most important, the network of literacy educators I met and still communicate with. The ILA conference was a great learning experience that opened up so many opportunities beyond my national borders—and it could do exactly the same for you.

Oluwaseun Aina, an ILA member since 2015, holds a master’s degree in communication and language arts from University of Ibadan, Nigeria. She is the founder of Magical Books, a social enterprise that promotes literacy among children and young adults. She was included on ILA’s first-ever 30 under 30 list in 2015.