Books by Dozier, IRA, McKenna and Walpole, and Toll

by Beth Munger

Responsive Literacy Coaching: Tools for Creating and Sustaining Purposeful Change by Cheryl Dozier (Stenhouse, Portland, ME, 2006)

This book invites readers in a friendly and professional way to share in a dialogue about literacy coaching. Author Cheryl Dozier, an assistant professor in the Department of Reading at the University at Albany, State University of New York, believes that “responsive literacy coaching is generative . . . [where] questioning leads to theorizing” and that collaborating leads naturally to partnerships. Dozier notes, “As a teacher, a researcher, and a coach I continue to grapple with the questions, What literacy environments and experiences are we creating for our teachers? What literacy environments and experiences are we creating in our schools for our students?”

Developing her book around these guiding questions, Dozier first explores what responsive literacy coaching entails and then shifts her focus to the specifics of the coach-teacher and teacher-student relationships. Classroom vignettes and solid research serve as sources of lively discussions of literacy coaching. The book offers a profusion of ideas to spark conversations around literacy time lines, team-teaching lessons, instructional practices, and a celebration of teaching and student learning—ideas that schools and teachers can adopt and adapt in creating a top-notch literacy coaching program.

Standards for Middle and High School Literacy Coaches by the IRA, in collaboration with NCTE, NCTM, NSTA, and NCSS (International Reading Association, Newark, DE, 2006)

This short book opens with statistics that are staggering: “Every school day in the United States for the past decade, more than 3,000 students drop out of high school (Joftus, 2002). Most are unable to keep pace with the rigors of the curriculum. They simply do not have the literacy skills to make sense of their textbooks (Allington, 1994; Kamil, 2003). . . . Without targeted literacy instruction, many who graduate from high school will be ill-equipped for the demands of college or the new economy, relegated to remedial courses or dead-end jobs (American Diploma Project, 2004).”

Braced against this backdrop, Standards for Middle and High School Literacy Coachesaddresses head-on what secondary literacy coaches can do to help. Included in the text are thoroughly detailed sections on what adolescents need, what the key elements of literacy coaching include, and how leadership and content-area standards apply to literacy coaching. One part of this book is devoted to an in-depth discussion of the content-area literacy standards, while another part takes an all-encompassing look at what’s involved in literacy coaching in middle and high school.

The Literacy Coaching Challenge: Models and Methods for Grades K–8 by Michael C. McKenna and Sharon Walpole (Guilford Press, New York)

Looking for a book that supplies models of coaching? One that taps into the principles of not only serving adult learners—the teachers to be coached—but serving those “teacher-learners” in school contexts? One that explores the role of assessment in coaching and offers suggestions for assessing your school’s assessment system? How about a book that discusses how professional development affects achievement?

The Literacy Coaching Challenge explores literacy coaching goals in depth. And there are plenty of hands-on examples and templates for teachers and coaches. You might want to pay special attention to Chapters 6, 7, and 8. They focus on individual classrooms with teachers at different grade levels; and, in fact, you could turn to these chapters first, find pertinent grade-level tips, challenges, examples, and sample classroom situations for your grade level, and apply what you find here.

The Literacy Coach’s Survival Guide: Essential Questions and Practical Answers by Cathy A. Toll (International Reading Association, Newark, DE, 2005)

Each major section of this reader-friendly book invites literacy coaches to explore coaching ideas and then follow up with strategic planning and practical ideas for actual literacy coaching. The first section of the book, for example, focuses on educational change, and a lively discussion ensues from the major question posed: “What do the experts say about educational change?” The author concludes that educational change often concentrates on four areas of change (the change leader, the change implementer, the change itself, and the process of change), and then she guides readers to questions that they may want to ask: “What does my principal think is the focus of change in our school? What do the teachers think? What do I think?” “How can I ensure that all of us on this staff share the same focus for change? If I can’t, how can I address competing foci?” and “Are there processes for change that will fit better with the focus of change?”

The second and third sections of this practical manual offer concrete tips for managing successful literacy coaching. Section 2 delves into what a successful literacy coach does, breaking the tasks down into manageable chunks for participants. Essential questions guide the discussion, and bulleted highlights invite readers to develop their own strategies for literacy coaching based on the numerous ideas introduced in the text. Section 3 tackles the challenge of coaching in difficult situations, proposing strategies for overcoming resistance and dealing with other tough coaching problems.

Beth Munger teaches composition, reading, and American literature at Ohio Dominican University. She has also taught composition and literature at Ohio State University and Columbus State Community College. Munger holds a bachelor of arts degree from Ohio Wesleyan University, where she majored in English and history, and a master of arts degree from Ohio State University in the field of rhetoric and composition. She has worked on several ORC projects, including Advancing Literacy Instruction Together (AdLIT), Ohio Writing Institute Network for Success (OhioWINS), and the English Language Arts Program Models.

Return to top