A Day in the Life of a School Literacy Consultant: The ABCs of an SLC

by Karen Carney

In this era of educational alphabet soup, many new letters are floating around in the proverbial broth—LSE, SLC, and eROI—just to mention a few. The three letters that have played a significant role in defining my new professional persona are SLC . . . otherwise known as school literacy consultant. Just what is a school literacy consultant, and what does she or he do?

The Ohio Department of Education and Office of Literacy have been instrumental in providing a framework for districts throughout the state to promote literacy learning across grade levels and content areas. I am fortunate to be working in a district that has been, and continues to be, proactive in the area of literacy. In the fall of 2005 I stepped out of my comfort zone—teaching first grade, a position that I had the privilege to hold for twenty-one years—and into the world of literacy coaching. Up to that point my opportunity to make a difference in children’s lives was limited to a classroom of twenty to twenty-five students, whereas now I had the potential to have an impact on the educational success of multiple classrooms of elementary students by providing teachers with professional development in best instructional practices. Overwhelming? Daunting?  Absolutely! OMG!!

My philosophy of being a lifelong learner enabled me to embrace this new journey into the world of coaching with optimism and confidence. For two years I was involved with the Literacy Specialist Project—an undertaking of the Office of Literacy. After that, I completed and survived the rigors of the newly developed Literacy Specialist Endorsement (LSE) and became one of the original “twenty-one” literacy specialists in the state of Ohio. OK, so now I’ve got the credentials, but how do I go about putting theory into practice? 

Research doesn’t have to state that “building relationships and developing a common language” are important first steps to the success of anything, most especially coaching—that is just common sense! When I began my coaching career in the elementary building where I had taught first grade for twenty-one years, one would assume that the transition would be easy. But you know the old saying—don’t assume anything! All of a sudden I was “one of them.”  Exactly what “one of them” was . . . I had no idea. Teachers saw me as an administrator, and administrators saw me as a teacher; it was like being in an educational purgatory. 

Slowly, as I began facilitating small-group professional development sessions, the teachers saw me as a “resource-come-to-life.” I began working with teachers in their classrooms, modeling lessons, team teaching, and planning. My time with two of the first grade classrooms I worked in was affectionately dubbed “Carney Time.” Our building adopted the assess-plan-teach framework using a developmental spelling inventory as the short-cycle assessment that became an important part of our “common language.” My stint as literacy coach at Campbell Elementary saw our building move from a designation of Academic Watch, School Improvement Year One, to a designation of Excellent on the School Report Card for the 2007–2008 academic year. Pretty impressive, if I do say so myself. But if you knew the staff at Campbell Elementary, you would understand how they could pull this off!

That was then, and this is now: Fast-forward to Karen Carney, school literacy consultant, at Campbell Middle School. So how and why does one go from that idyllic elementary setting to the unfamiliar and challenging world of . . . The Middle School?! It’s a timing thing. Our district secured Literacy Improvement Grant (LIG) funds for a middle and high school SLC. 

As I begin my second year as the Campbell Middle School SLC, I find myself reflecting upon the successes that my new colleagues and I have encountered along the way, as well as my journey of personal and professional growth.

My first plan of action was to arm myself with the knowledge and resources I would need to pull this off. The necessary first step once again was building relationships and earning trust. “Carney Time” was replaced with “Tuesdays with Carney.” The importance that the district accorded literacy across all grade levels and content areas was quite evident as the middle school schedule afforded me the opportunity to meet with the entire staff by grade levels every Tuesday. So . . . I have the time and the place . . . all I need now is the content! 

Campbell Middle School took advantage of an excellent learning opportunity offered by the Ohio Resource Center (ORC): a series of workshops called “Taking Action on Adolescent Literacy.” Not only did this professional development series enable me to build my own background knowledge on the adolescent learner, but it also allowed me to form relationships with the teachers and administrator on our team.

I used the resources provided from this initiative to develop and present a summer workshop for our district: Adolescent Literacy in the Content Areas. The books Improving Adolescent Literacy: Content Area Strategies at Work (Fisher & Frey, 2008) and 50 Content Area Strategies for Adolescent Literacy (Fisher, Brozo, Frey, & Ivey, 2007) served as the backdrop for a wonderful learning and growing experience for fifteen teachers from all three buildings—elementary, middle, and high school—and all content areas: mathematics, language arts, science, music, health, and foreign language. This workshop got the ball rolling for me as I continually sought ways to engage teachers who “did not teach reading!” 

One of the activities that we did was to turn a biopoem into an assessment tool. A biopoem consists of eleven lines:

Line 1: First Name
Line 2: Four traits that describe you
Line 3: Position/job (teacher/student of . . .), family status
          (wife/daughter/son of . . .) (choose two)
Line 4: Lover of (three items, objects, or things)
Line 5: Who feels (three things)
Line 6: Who needs (three things)
Line 7: Who gives (three things)
Line 8: Who fears (three things)
Line 9: Who would like to see (three things)
Line 10: Resident of
Line 11: Last name

Although the usual biopoem describes a person, we used it to describe content-area elements. This is an authentic way to show the interconnectedness of a literacy strategy across multiple content areas, as the following two works show:

Parallelogram
2 sets of opposite, parallel sides, 2 sets of opposite, congruent sides, opposite angles congruent, bisecting diagonals
Type of quadrilateral
Lover of rectangles, squares, and rhombi
Who feels proud when used in artwork, architecture, and clothing designs
Who needs four sides, four angles, and two dimensions
Who gives 3-dimensional figures their shape, prisms and pyramids their names, & area/perimeter a purpose
Who fears being called a trapezoid
Who would like to see more recognition for its usefulness in the real world
Resident of Geometry

Mother
Continents, Oceans, Mountains, Rivers
Interacts with the Sun and the Moon
Lover of humans, animals, plants
Who feels the rain forests, tundra and glaciers are necessary
Who needs devotion, care, and nurture from her occupants
Who gives life, beauty, and resources to living creatures
Who fears acid rain, global warming and humans
Who would like to see peace in the world
Resident of the Solar System
Earth

My time with the middle school teachers has been filled with introducing new strategies and resources especially designed for the adolescent learner. When you have one shot at credibility, you have to pull out all the stops. So I turned to a sure thing—the ORC website. 

My first few sessions of “Tuesdays with Carney” had us visiting the ORC website, creating accounts, and getting acclimated to the site. I used a website navigational piece to direct everyone to the different areas and features of the AdLIT section. Boy, did I ever hit pay dirt!  Teachers explored the Professional Development Resources, where they clicked on a video of their choice; browsed through the Reading Strategies and selected one of particular interest to them; checked out lessons in their content area; and finally recorded their journey for future reference. 

It was during this “assignment” that a major breakthrough occurred. Two of our language arts teachers along with the inclusion teacher showed a particular interest in the Word Wall Performances video and took off with it. I videoed this lesson—you can see it on Teacher Tube—and we used it as a “strategy in action” for one of our waiver days. How powerful was it to see a strategy being used by our teachers with our students? Definitely one the most authentic artifacts of full implementation! These teachers are taking the show on the road. Stacy Blasko, Kelly Havrilla, and Carrie Schiavone will be presenting “Visualizing Vocabulary” at the OCTELA Spring 2009 conference in March. 

Two of our rightfully proud students and the word wall they helped to create

Another important component and requirement of the LIG is for the middle school staff to engage in an online learning course. I am serving as the facilitator as Campbell Middle School pilots the project “Adolescent Literacy in a Changing World.” Among the credentials I hold is that of an eRead Ohio instructor (eROI—oh no, more letters for the soup!). Waiver days and “Tuesdays with Carney” have been set aside so that teachers and administrators along with the SLC/eROI can explore the most current issues in adolescent literacy (how students learn, motivations/behaviors and best practice strategies, etc.) in an online learning venue.

Next steps for this SLC: continuing the process with Campbell Middle School to include a first annual family night—“March Madness”—and the construction of short-cycle assessments by content areas; beginning the process of literacy coaching with Campbell Memorial High School; continuing my work with the District Literacy Committee*; meeting informally with teachers in the Article of the Month Club to discuss articles of interest**; and co-organizing the district’s first “Right to Read” event in May (where I will be working with the elementary literacy coach, who happens to be a great friend and colleague). Anyone who knows me knows that it doesn’t get any better than this!

References

Fisher, D., Brozo, W. G., Frey, N., & Ivey, G. (2007). 50 content area strategies for adolescent literacy. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2008). Improving adolescent literacy: Content area strategies at work (2nd ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

**My hope is that this will lead to a book study next year, where I would serve as the facilitator at the “Literacy Lounge.”

Karen Carney has been a literacy specialist in the Campbell City School District for the past four years. Prior to that, she taught first grade for twenty-one years. She holds a B.S. in education, an M.S. in curriculum, and a reading endorsement from Youngstown State University. Karen is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in literacy at The University of Akron.

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