The Literacy Coach’s Game Plan, Making Teacher Collaboration, Student learning, and School Improvement a Reality by Gabrielle Nidus early 90’s and Maya Sadder. How well I know that teachers can get their back up when anyone invades the sanctity of their classroom to offer advice. The literacy coach, whose job it is to enhance learning outcomes in a school, faces resistance. Gabrielle and Maya are acutely aware of the delicacy of their role and strategize to create a non-threatening, collaborative climate beneficial to students and teachers alike.
Their predominant approach accentuates the positive, all the while sticking to their guns. They have discovered that the best way to teach literacy is to begin with the students’ own work. By basing lessons on their evaluations of issues found in assignments throughout the course of the year, they tackle real and demonstrable needs. This method, as they convincingly demonstrate, is much more productive than using standardized achievement tests; the results of these tests come too late in the year to be useful in planning ways to address student needs.
The authors use the metaphor of “the game” throughout the book to lighten the tone and to emphasize the creativity and playfulness that teaching the young requires.
Though this is a manual for literacy coaches, it would certainly be helpful to teachers who like the collaborative model and to administrators who seek a path to lift the academic level of a school.Sometimes the educational world throws money at a problem without doing the hard work of thinking through how to arrive at more successful outcomes.The thoughtfulsystems this book explores are hopeful reminders that we can do better.
