Northwest Education

Fall 2006 / Volume 12, Number 1.

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Finding gold at the end of the Rainbow

Anchorage’s investment in literacy coaching pays big dividends.

Story by Rhonda Barton
Photos by Jim Lavrakas

ANCHORAGE, Alaska—It’s 10:15 a.m. and a jazzy version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” comes blaring out of the public address system. All along the corridor, doors fly open and the hall fills with a tidal wave of bodies. It’s “walk to read” time and the 390 boys and girls of William Tyson Elementary are in a hurry to join their assigned reading groups.

Every school day, the same scene repeats. Students spend 90 minutes in a reading block where youngsters are grouped by reading level. Using the Success for All model pioneered by researchers Robert Slavin and Nancy Madden, teachers structure their lessons around phonics. They encourage cooperative learning and constantly monitor their students’ progress. With assessments conducted every eight to nine weeks, children can move up to a more advanced reading group or receive individualized help—depending on how well they’re doing.

And, overall, they appear to be doing well. Tyson was recognized by the federal government as a Distinguished Title I School. It made AYP in 2004—the first year that Reading First was implemented—and last year more than 70 percent of its third-graders scored proficient or advanced on the statewide reading assessment. Those are no small feats considering Tyson’s demographics: Half the students are English language learners, 100 percent qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, and about a third of the school turns over every year.

Principal John Kito, who has led the school since it opened nine years ago, takes an active role in the literacy effort. “It’s important to be a champion of our students and supportive of teachers in encouraging the fidelity of our [Success for All] program,” says Kito, whose heritage is both Japanese and Alaska Native. “You really need to be an instructional leader as well as a building manager.”

Kito meets weekly with literacy coach Erin Binek. They have a standing date at 10 on Monday mornings to look at student data, review kids’ progress, and discuss Binek’s staff development plans. Student achievement is also the focus of monthly meetings that Kito and Binek hold with grade-level and instructional teams.

Parents aren’t left out of the equation, either. Four times a year, the school organizes “parent universities” where one of the main messages is that reading is important. Whether the home language is Hmong, Mien, Samoan, Spanish, Cambodian, or Thai, parents learn why they should read to their kids and how to do it.

Faithfully following the model

While Tyson is one of six Reading First schools in the Anchorage School District, it’s the only one that’s adopted the Success for All model. And, its laser-like focus on reading spans kindergarten to sixth grade. Binek admits that some criticize Success for All as too prescriptive. “But, a lot of our kids need that structure,” she points out. “They need to know what comes next and have us all speaking the same language.”

As the literacy coach, one of Binek’s responsibilities is to observe whether teachers are using the curriculum properly. “In the beginning, there were teachers who were really uncomfortable having me come into their classrooms, but now, they don’t even notice me half the time. Some ask me to come, especially when they’re doing an assessment,” she says.

Indeed, Angela Agnus barely glances up when Binek strides into her second-grade classroom. Nine children squirm cross-legged on the carpet in front of Agnus, whispering in Hmong. All are recent arrivals to the United States and all are considered monolingual.

“Listen to my sounds,” says Agnus as she pronounces L-I-K-E, with each letter distinctly articulated. The youngsters excitedly yell back, “LIKE,” and so it goes as the class tackles a series of words and sentences that illustrate the words’ meanings.

Binek, meanwhile, spends a quiet 15 minutes individually evaluating one of Agnus’s students. Later, she explains that the Hmong language doesn’t contain the letters “b” or “d” so it’s difficult for these children to hear or make such sounds. “This little boy is starting to get words; he can sound them out but not blend them,” she says. Binek is hopeful, though, that he’ll repeat his classmates’ progress. “At the beginning of the year, many of these kids couldn’t speak English at all,” she remembers. “Now (seven months later), some can’t keep quiet!”

A couple of doors down, first-grade teacher Stacy Pickens works with a “Reading Roots” group that’s one step more advanced than Agnus’s. She grabs her shin and announces with feeling, “My leg has pain!” The “ai” combination pops up on a classroom screen, followed by a brief, lively video featuring Alphie the Alligator sounding out the word “tail.” The fast-paced class moves from one activity to the next: Youngsters play a game contrasting opposites like lumpy and smooth; they read together from an oversized book, stopping to discuss the pictures; and they point to classmates wearing sneakers, noting that the letters “ea” and “er” go together.

“Every word is intentional,” says Pickens, in describing her lesson. “And, I’m constantly checking to make sure the kids understand.” Her dozen students sport nametags that hint at their far-flung roots: Jh’Darius, Nyajook, Phia, Yeng, Falesiva, and Changkueth come from places as distant as the Sudan, Laos, and Thailand.

With so many children entering the system at different levels of fluency, using a tiered assessment program becomes even more critical. “Depending on whether they’re a benchmark, strategic, or intensive student, we try to figure out what’s the best intervention—whether it’s language, or fluency, or phonics,” says Binek. “Instead of just guessing—'oh well, he’s not reading, I think it might be this’—we can actually find out in testing that [the student] doesn’t know a particular sound and we need to teach it to him before we do anything else.”

Binek shares her book-jammed office with Title I Reading Specialist Judith Burtner, whom she calls her “mentor.” But, responsibility for helping Tyson students become strong readers doesn’t fall on just these two women’s shoulders. Every certified teacher in the building is considered a reading teacher. As a result, says Binek, “We see our kids learning every day.”

Getting results

The gains made by Reading First schools in Anchorage have been dramatic. Last year, all six improved by 8 to 20 points on the state’s standards-based reading assessment. Half the Reading First schools are well above the district average of 80.8 percent proficiency. The other half inched close to the average with scores in the 70s.

Statewide Reading First Coordinator Stacy McKeown gives coaches like Binek much of the credit for the jump in test results. “Coaches play a large role,” she says. “They’re in the classrooms all the time. They guide grade-level teams in analyzing the data and get them to dig deep and see what they can do to enhance their instruction to meet the specific needs of their students.”

Patricia McRae, the Reading First director for the Anchorage School District, also recognizes the importance of coaches in ensuring that teachers consistently deliver a comprehensive curriculum with excellent instructional practice. “Having expert coaches to work through all aspects of literacy instruction with our teachers is a critical component to our success,” she says.

Across the district, the number of kindergarten students reading at grade level increased six points to 80 percent. “This was a significant increase,” says McRae. “In looking at where the increases occurred, the majority were seen in schools that are utilizing a core curriculum, and all of these schools had reading coaches from full time to part time each week.”

Because of the impressive gains at Reading First schools, Anchorage has committed to adopting similar strategies and materials across the district. Each year, it will introduce Houghton Mifflin Reading in a dozen schools until the structured program is in all 60 elementary schools. In 2006–2007, the district will deploy nine Title I reading coaches, along with six support teachers, at non–Reading First schools adopting the new curriculum.

One such teacher is Jody Hagen-Smith, who divides her time among 10 schools. There’s no “typical” day in Hagen-Smith’s schedule. She might be modeling lessons, observing in classrooms, sharing research, or meeting with teachers to discuss lesson plans. Much of her time is dedicated to working with new teachers.

Helping with assessments is typically an easy entry point for a coach. When Hagen-Smith started coaching, she began by providing information on analyzing test results. But, she quickly learned that a coach must build relationships while trying to pry open the classroom door. “You have to be respectful of what the teachers were doing before—never be critical and approach everything with a positive attitude,” she advises.

“Jody gets working with teachers,” says Phillip Schneider, principal of Gladys Wood, one of Hagen-Smith’s assigned schools. “People feel comfortable going to her to discuss in a nonthreatening way their challenges as well as their triumphs.”

Schneider relies on Hagen-Smith’s judgment in gauging how his teachers are implementing the new Houghton Mifflin curriculum. “We knew we were going to have some turtles and hares: some teachers who would jump in and others with their own 'tried and true’ approach who would resist change.”

Coaching the coaches

How to deal with such resisters is a common dilemma. Hagen-Smith and about four dozen other literacy coaches gathered on an uncharacteristically sunny day in March to get advice from a pro—consultant Cathy Toll, author of two widely respected books, The Literacy Coach’s Survival Guide: Essential Questions and Practical Answers and The Literacy Coach’s Desk Reference: Processes and Perspectives for Effective Coaching.

Toll cautioned them not to hide their expertise, but not to come off as “experts,” either. Instead, coaches need to build trust and lay the foundation for their work. That work can take many forms—from meeting with teachers in small groups to working one-on-one or offering demonstration lessons.

Plucking a willing candidate from the audience, Toll role-played how to approach the resistant teacher—an exercise that required heavy doses of diplomacy, tact, and perseverance. Toll started the conversation—which she likened to a first date—by asking, “When you think about the reading and writing you want your students to do, and the kind of teaching you want to do, and the kind of classroom you want to have, what gets in the way?”

Almost like a psychiatrist gently probing a patient’s psyche, Toll kept prompting the teacher to tell her more and then repeated what she heard to make sure she understood. The ultimate goal was to help the teacher uncover roadblocks to effective literacy instruction and work together to solve them.

In the end, one audience member wanted to know how Toll was able to keep pushing and trying to engage the obviously reluctant teacher. “I’m going to nudge as much as I can,” she said. “It’s my job to start a conversation and engage you. If I didn’t it would be like saying 'that child is so far behind, let’s forget about him.’”

Bringing it back to the struggling student—the ultimate beneficiary of coaching—struck a chord with the audience. “Thanks for the metaphor, because I would never give up on a child,” said one coach.

For Hagen-Smith, the lessons of the day reinforced what she’s learned in two years on the frontlines of coaching. “The most successful classrooms have been [ones with] teachers who realize that my position is not evaluative. I’m not in the classroom making judgments, but being a support. I’m there as a sounding board.”

Reading First Around
the Northwest

(Subgrant Awards as of September 2006)

State	No. of Districts/Schools
Alaska	3/14
Idaho	16/30
Montana	24/33
Oregon	21/50
Washington	34/70
Total U.S.	1,717/ 5,666

Source: SEDL Reading First Database