This month we will CELEBRATE COACHING in Area 9. What could be a better way to kick off the New Year?  Hillsborough County’s Reading Coaches have a lot to CELEBRATE. We are part of a growing professional learning community.
Before becoming a reading coach in Hillsborough, elementary reading coach candidates receive over 180 hours of training and attend a six week summer institute at a designated “Reading Camp” in the district before receiving the title of “coach”. They train the year before they take on the role. They also get many opportunities to be coached, themselves. Once they become official coaches, this “coach-the-coach” philosophy continues for new and veteran coaches alike; through triads set up by the district reading team for supporting each other. Professional development is provided to coaches twice a month by district and state level personnel, and sometimes even published authors and experts in the field.

For example, in October, elementary reading coaches and reading resource teachers had the pleasure of hearing Ellin Keene, author of Mosaic of Thought, present information on the Rumelhart and McClelland Research (1986) on surface and deep structure systems of reading. She not only brought us to deeper understandings of teaching reading comprehension strategies, but led us to being metacognitive about our OWN reading behaviors. Ellin Keene made complex learning easy to understand by allowing us to experience the gradual release model for learning new information that empowered us to take the information back to the teachers and students at our sites. 

We are eager to read her new edition of Mosaic of Thought and To Understand (newly published). It promises to offer up-to-the-minute insight for classroom teachers, literacy coaches, and school leaders everywhere.

Hillsborough Coaches CELEBRATE the vision of our leadership to hold professional development and life-long learning at the pinnacle of everything we do each day as educators. We all learn and grow from each other, but most importantly, we learn from our students!

Article reprinted with permission of the author from the January2008 issue of Florida Literacy Coaches Association: Coaches Update.