Literacy Now

Leaders for Literacy Day 2016 brought more voices to the conversation about how to end the illiteracy epidemic around the world. This year’s program, Literacy Leadership: A Critical Driver to Advancing Literacy for All, took a closer look at how leaders need to steer conversation and action in the international literacy movement.

Bringing together a coalition of forward-thinking advocates in New York City, the ILA convening at the Institute of International Education crossed over onto the Internet where both event participants and other stakeholders wrote about what literacy leadership means to them.

Those leaders in the #AgeOfLiteracy include:

• How Partnerships Pave the Path to Literacy
  by Michael G. Dougherty, Pencils of Promise

• Leaders for Literacy Day: International Literacy Association
  by Rebecca McDonald, Library for All

• Social Justice Literacy Leadership That Values Equity and Sustainability
  by Dana Stachowiak, The Educator Collaborative

• Want Better Writers? Make More Time for Independent Reading
  by Roz Linder, The Educator Collaborative

• Three Rules for Literacy Leadership
  by Heather Rocco, The Educator Collaborative

• Leaders in Literacy
  by Teri Lesesne, Author

• Read Aloud. Change the World.
  by JoEllen McCarthy, The Educator Collaborative

• Teaching Educator Digital Literacy With a Pinterest Party
  by Steven W. Anderson, Blogging About the Web 2.0 Connected Classroom

• Can't Read vs. Won't Read: Engagement and African American Males
  by Chad Everett & Rita Platt, The Educator Collaborative

• Digital Literacy Is About Power and Privilege
  by Angela Maiers & Nora Moran, Angela Maiers Blog

• Somewhere in My Education
  by Pernille Ripp, Blogging Through the Fourth Dimension

• Literacy Leaders Can Be Found in All Subjects
  by Lynn Olson, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

• Making Literacy Everbody's Business
  by Andreas Schleicher, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

• Equipping Leaders in the Age of Literacy
  by Janelle McLaughlin, Innovative Education Solutions

• Leading Large-Scale Improvement in Literacy Achievement
  by Mariana Haynes, Alliance for Excellent Education

ILA developed Frameworks for Literacy Education Reform in response to today’s complex and evolving education landscape. With an increase in English learners, high-stakes testing, and digital technologies driving new modes of teaching and learning, challenges for the classroom teacher are mounting. The new white paper’s frameworks serve as a high-level rubric that school administrators and policymakers can use to create or assess reform proposals. In this blog series, we’ll take a closer look at each of the frameworks.

Schools provide the physical and conceptual structure for a student’s first learning experience—from learning to recognize letters and read to expressing ideas through writing. Each child starts school with a different level of literacy skills based on a variety of factors and it’s up to schools and those who bring schools to life (teachers, principals, administrators, etc.) to help children meet their potentials. Schools need to acknowledge the diverse levels of students’ literacy through adaptable curriculum, accountability measures, and the quality of resources available there.

Making quality curricula and materials that are developed for individual students at the local level available to every school is critical to student success. When those curricula and materials are used effectively, accountability measures can be put into place. These assessments should be transparent, ethical, and fair.

“Unfortunately, there have been instances of unethical use of test scores in schools. Examples I have seen include making grading and/or retention decisions based on screening data and engaging students in extensive, direct test practice instead of instruction,” said Sharon Walpole, professor of education at the University of Delaware and lead writer on the schools section of Frameworks for Literacy Education Reform. “The same goes for outcomes. Policymakers who advocate only for absolute achievement rather than growth in achievement ignore the efforts of teachers in schools that struggle. Evaluations should look both at outcomes and at growth.”

Walpole said having students practice tests repeatedly instead of teaching a strong curriculum is also a disservice to students.

Schools should also incorporate technology into literacy curriculum, but judiciously and strategically. Students should be directed to evaluate information found online and could also use technology to help them both comprehend and compose, according to the frameworks.

To realize these goals, schools must be a place where administrators are supported to interpret state and federal standards and accountability, where staff members are enabled and encouraged to make decisions for their students, and where principals are prepared to provide consistent professional development for teachers to reach literacy goals.

“Schools and teachers have a responsibility to differentiate and to establish reasonable systems that use all available resources in as flexible a way as possible, taking advantage of assessments and providing additional instruction or additional challenge as soon as possible,” Walpole said. “Schools within districts, classes within schools, and students within classrooms may have different needs and should be treated differently, especially when it comes to resources.”

The complete white paper, Frameworks for Literacy Education Reform, can be found here.

April Hall is editor of Literacy Daily. A journalist for 20 years, she has specialized in education, writing and editing for newspapers, websites, and magazines.

Teachers and parents alike know the struggle of trying to get kids to read and enjoy the classics. Convincing adolescent readers to put the cell phone down and pick up any book, much less Shakespeare, is challenging enough. The issue lies not so much in the content of these works, but in the prospect of deciphering Elizabethan English to find the current issues in the old Shakespeare. 

Celebrate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death this month with a special Wednesday #ILAchat at 8 p.m. ET on April 13.

Join Sharon Draper, an accomplished educator and New York Times best-selling author whose many achievements include the National Teacher of the Year Award, the Coretta Scott King Literary Award, and the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime literary achievement.

She will bring her expertise on using the Bard in the classroom to the Twitter chat with experience and tips.

Authors Brett Wright and Courtney Carbone will also be on hand to answer questions on how to make Shakespeare less intimidating and more entertaining. Their popular series OMG Shakespeare (Penguin Random House) makes the Bard’s works more accessible to teenagers by using modern jargon without sacrificing the core storytelling. Between the two, they have published four books in the series, including Macbeth #killingit, A Midsummer Night #nofilter, srsly Hamlet, and YOLO Juliet. All of these retellings are told in text and social media format, attracting wary readers by using teens’ own language.

Follow #ILAchat and @ILAToday at 8 p.m. ET on Wednesday, April 13 to join the conversation about updating timeless literary works to make the language more relatable to younger readers.  

Anyone who tweets using the hashtag will be entered into a drawing to win a copy of an OMG Shakespeare release.

Nicole Lund is ILA’s communication intern.

Last year, the International Literacy Association (ILA) started a conversation about literacy leadership, beginning with the impact collective action makes on eliminating illiteracy around the world. To propel the movement forward, experts in the field were brought together on April 14, 2015, to share ideas and inspiration.

This April 14, ILA will convene its second annual Leaders for Literacy Day gathering in New York City. This year’s program Literacy Leadership: A Critical Driver to Advancing Literacy for All will focus on how leaders must steer conversation and action in the #AgeofLiteracy.

We'll hear from leaders in the field through keynote and spotlight addresses and then a dynamic panel to allow discussion among experts. These leaders will address collaborative approaches to develop and advance literacy worldwide, offering multidisciplinary approaches from their varied backgrounds in the education, nonprofit, private, and public sectors. Afterward, discussions will be more informal as panelists and attendees come together for networking and continued engagement. All of the action will be live-tweeted and then covered in depth on Literacy Daily.

This year’s literacy leaders include Lily Valtchanova, Research Liaison Officer at UNESCO; Rebecca McDonald, founder and Chief Executive Officer of Library for All; Steven Duggan, Director of Worldwide Education Strategy at Microsoft; Leslie Engle Young, Director of Impact at Pencils of Promise; Jody Spiro, Director of Education Leadership at the Wallace Foundation; Christie Vilsack, Senior Advisor for International Education at USAID; Marcie Craig Post, Executive Director of ILA. The panel will be moderated by Liz Willen, Editor in Chief at The Hechinger Report.

Celebrate Leaders for Literacy Day and join the conversation April 14 starting at 10 a.m. ET by following @ILAToday and #AgeofLiteracy on Twitter. Engage in our virtual dialogue by writing about the topic on your personal or your organization’s blog or by posting about the event and theme to your social media channels using #AgeofLiteracy. And, if you are in New York, please RSVP today and join us at the Institute of International Education.

Nicole Lund is ILA’s communications intern.

You’ll find tons of options while perusing the ILA 2016 Conference & Exhibits offerings, and carving out a schedule can be tough. Enter the conference iPlanner, an online directory of conference events that allows you to not only look through the schedule in a curated manner, but also create your personalized schedule with everything from General Session to Literacy Night at the Ballpark. You can even add your own items, such as a coffee date with a colleague.
 
The iPlanner includes four sections: Speaker Sign In, Itinerary Planner, Program Grid, and Event Search. These can be accessed from the upper right corner on the first page after signing in.

Check out these instructions to help you customize your conference experience!

Log in

The iPlanner homepage has information about the iPlanner and a place to log in and enter your password, if you’ve already created a profile. Although everyone is free to browse conference offerings on the Program Grid or use the Event Search, creating a login and password allows you to save your itinerary. It will also allow you to sync this itinerary with the ILA 2016 app, scheduled for release in June.

If you have never used the iPlanner, simply click the “Create Profile now!” link toward the bottom of the page. The login and password for the iPlanner are different from your member login/password and any other logins and passwords you may have set up with ILA, so new iPlanner users should create a profile. Once you create a profile and login, searching for sessions and adding them to your itinerary is easy.

Browse the program grid

One way to find sessions you’re interested in is to use the Program Grid. Click on an underlined day at the top of the grid page to display that day’s events. Session times run along the top of the grid.

The grid is divided into 11 categories including Standards and Assessments, Children’s and Young Adult Literature, International Literacy Instruction, Content Area Literacy, and Engaging Classroom Instruction. If you are interested in one of these topics, review the sessions listed in that row.

Click on the underlined link to open a window with more information about that session, including date, times, presenters, capacity, Clock Hours, and more. This window also has options to print this information or add it to your itinerary. Click “Add to Itinerary” and then “OK” to confirm.

Search for specifics

If you are interested in a specific topic or are looking for a session from a certain presenter, use the Event Search.

You can search by keyword in the Text Search field, speaker last name, date, category, event type (luncheon, symposium, Teaching Edge, etc.), and location. New this year, search for a conference track, including 21st Century Skills, Literacy Leadership, Literacy Research, and Title I.

When your search results are displayed, click on the underlined link for a window with more session information and a link to add it to your itinerary. Or, simply add sessions to your itinerary using the “Add” checkbox on the right side of the search results webpage.

Add your own events

There’s more to do than just the events inside the John B. Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center and Sheraton Boston. Whether you’re scheduling tours, lunch, or meetings with colleagues, the iPlanner allows you to add your own events to your itinerary. From the “My Day Planner” page, click the “Add Personal Activity” button at the top of your itinerary. Personal activities that you created show in orange on your day planner.

Review your itinerary

To see items you’ve added to your itinerary, click on “Itinerary Planner” in the top right menu list. On the “Itinerary Planner” page, “My Itinerary” is in the left margin in yellow.

On your online itinerary, reviewing your conference plans and clicking on session links for more details is easy. You can add one, two, or even three simultaneous sessions to your itinerary in case one is full or cancelled. Sessions can be removed from your itinerary at any time by clicking on the “Remove” link next to the session title.

Click on “View Day Planner” link at the top right of the “My Itinerary” page to see a colored chart of how sessions overlap.

Keep your itinerary at your fingertips

The “My Itinerary” and “My Day Planner” pages give you the option of e-mailing your itinerary to the address you provided in your profile or producing a printer-friendly version of your schedule. Click “Download” and choose an option.

The ILA 2016 app will be available in early June, at which time you can sync your iPlanner itinerary with it. Please note: If you created your iPlanner login prior to Dec. 1, 2013, the importing feature is not available. In that case, we recommend that you create a new iPlanner account.

Adding sessions is not registering or reserving seats!

Please be aware of the room capacity for the selected sessions (capacity is listed in the session details) you wish to attend. The Itinerary Planner is simply a planning tool and is not used to register for sessions. Entry into each session at the conference is on a first-come, first-served basis. Also, placing items in your itinerary does not constitute a paid registration.

The ILA 2016 Conference will be July 9–11 in Boston, MA, with more than 6,000 attendees eager to cultivate new teaching practices. With over 300 sessions, including several new additions to the schedule, and the popular Preconference Institutes on July 8, the weekend is sure to be a memorable one. Register today for the conference to take advantage of special Early Bird pricing before it ends April 18.