SEEC’s Danette Brown, Professional Learning Specialist, and Erica Carney, Instructional Literacy Coach, hit the road and visited Central Cass 5-12 educators this fall for a quick introduction to their customized professional development offering: High Leverage Literacy Strategies for All. Casselton administrators, Nikki Wixo and Lisa Narum, reached out to the SEEC looking for opportunities for their whole staff to engage in literacy work during their professional development days and late starts throughout the 24-25 school year.
“Customized professional development is becoming more and more of the norm for our Teaching and Learning teams here at the SEEC. District leaders are clear about what they want and need and over the last two or three years, we have received increased requests for support around the big things—engagement, assessment, instruction—that we know are proven to impact student achievement and those requests are coming from the building level. Administrators want their entire staff to hear the message at the same time. And we love getting into buildings, connecting with the educators and support staff, and collaborating with them to enhance their practices and make their jobs more efficient and rewarding. When everybody is focusing on the same teaching standards or elements, there is collective responsibility within the staff and in turn, the likelihood of the practices or elements being implemented increases. Together, they move forward supporting learners in really fantastic ways,” says Danette Brown.
Central Cass’s administration chose to focus on literacy in their secondary spaces. During their back-to-school professional development over 50 educators engaged in their own personal “why” behind literacy, literacy across content areas, and science of reading research. They experienced the day-in-the-life of a struggling reader and how that impacts not only their ability to comprehend, but also stay focused and engaged, and their overall perspective on their ability to do hard things. One educator said, I am thinking about reading in the content areas differently and have a new perspective on our struggling readers and their daily experience at school.” Another said, “I am seeing the students who “don’t try” or zone out as differently now. I am one to love to learn and very motivated, and I felt very unmotivated to complete these tasks today without full understanding, so I am seeing them in a different light.”
The stage was set for the importance of their already solidified MTSS processes at Central Cass and what it looks like for educators to make simple tweaks to their instructional design to support more intensified instruction in order to support all learners regardless of their abilities.
SEEC will head back over to visit the secondary staff a few more times this year--each time focusing in on strategies that will impact learners in the classroom the very next day. Fluency, decoding, and vocabulary strategies will be explicitly taught to all educators and modeled within different content areas to show how literacy can be supported everywhere within a school system. Additionally, SEEC will spend some time reviewing data ahead of the spring semester to ensure that the intensification of instruction is meeting the needs of the learners within their system.
“We are very excited to be working so closely with the Grade 5-12 educators at Central Cass. Statewide legislation has placed an emphasis on the foundational skills in K-3, and as schools have begun diving into those foundational skills, they have said, ‘This is important learning for educators in other grade bands as well’. We have seen an uptick in requests from schools and educators regarding older students, and we are excited about this series to meet those needs!” said Erica Carney.
If you are interested in learning more about how you can participate in our SEEC offering—High Leverage Literacy Strategies for All—check out our individual offering being held this spring for anyone in the SEEC region. More secondary course offerings will be available in the future as well, so stay tuned!