Earlier this week, I quoted literacy educator Regie Routman from an International Reading Association publication. I mentioned that the National Council of Teachers (NCTE) and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) are also calling for collaborative school cultures.

In this week’s NCTE’s InBox: News, Views, and Ideas You Can Use email blast kicked off the week’s communication with a link to the National Center for Literacy Education Survey and this information:

“77% of Educators Surveyed: Literacy Is Not Just the Responsibility of English Teachers. This is the #1 finding in a survey of 10,000 educators from all roles, grade levels, and subject areas, who agreed that literacy is one of the most important parts of their job.”

School librarians who have developed strategies for coteaching reading comprehension and other literacy skills can help colleagues at all grade levels and in all disciplines hone effective instruction in literacy. Meeting teachers’ self-identified needs can firmly establish the school librarian’s role in the academic program of the school.

When ASCD selected their “Best of 2012-2013” articles from the publication Educational Leadership, Rick DuFour and Mike Mattos’s article “How Do Principals Really Improve Schools?” made the cut. As long-time award-winning principals and researchers, DuFour and Mattos combine their testimonials and research when they attest that the most powerful strategy for focusing on learning is creating “the collaborative culture and collective responsibility of a professional learning community (PLC).”

These are the questions they pose for PLC team members:
• What knowledge, skills, and dispositions should all students acquire as a result of the unit we’re about to teach?
• How much time will we devote to this unit?
• How will we gather evidence of student learning throughout the unit in our classrooms and at its conclusion as a team?
• How can we use this evidence of learning to improve our individual practice and our team’s collective capacity to help students learn, to intervene for students unable to demonstrate proficiency, and to enrich the learning for students (DuFour & Mattos, 2013, p. 38).

School librarians who are skilled at instructional design and evidence-based practice are positioned to be leaders on PLCs. When your principal calls for team leaders for this year’s PLCs, will you be one of the leaders at the table?

References

DuFour, R., & Mattos, M. (2013). How do principals really improve schools? Educational Leadership, 70(7), 34-40.

NCTE. (2013). NCTE InBox: News, Views, and Ideas You Can Use. September 4, 2013.

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