During the legislative session that ended on March 8, Indiana’s policymakers approved HB1243, an education omnibus bill. The bill has one provision that is especially meaningful to me: it defines the role of a literacy coach and creates opportunities for districts to create systems to sustain these roles. I’ve experienced the benefits of expert coaching first-hand and know that it can be transformative for teachers’ instructional practices and students’ outcomes.
When I first began teaching more than a decade ago, I thought I was prepared to help my students succeed as learners and especially to become better readers. During my first year in the classroom, my students and I were discussing a passage from Lois Lowry’s “Number the Stars,” where the heroine, Annamarie, is walking through the woods to deliver a package. Despite my best efforts Roberto, one of my sixth graders, couldn’t understand what he was reading. As the rest of the class moved on, Roberto was still trying to decipher the sentences in the passage. In small groups or one-on-one, I would read the passages outloud and yet, he continued to struggle.
I know that Roberto would’ve been struggling for a lot longer had Mrs. Anderson, my instructional coach, not stepped in to support me. After looking at and discussing some of Roberto’s work together, Mrs. Anderson and I realized that he couldn’t distinguish a verb from a noun. Roberto didn’t know what an adjective was and so couldn’t decipher the sentences. Mrs. Anderson coached me in how to break down the passages into chunks of text and then develop a strategy to work with Roberto on color-coding the parts of speech in a sentence by first identifying the verb and then adding nouns and adjectives. We added every new word Roberto was able to read to a colorful word wall. Gradually, Roberto became a better reader and became better engaged in our class. He gained confidence and began to enjoy learning. Without Mrs. Anderson’s help, Roberto and I would have continued to struggle.
Effective coaching is an essential part of a teacher’s growth and development and it is the reason why I’m still in the classroom after 12 years of teaching. I became a better teacher because of the support and coaching I received from Mrs. Anderson and my district’s program, structured for teachers like me to get weekly support with specific strategies to aid students in reading, writing, and math and to improve classroom management. Educators who struggle to teach literacy need to be partnered with qualified instructional coaches like Mrs. Anderson, who are explicitly focused on literacy and the science of reading. Only then will Indiana’s teachers be better prepared to support their students in their endeavors to read.
My experience with Mrs. Anderson and my own success over time as a teacher inspired me to become an instructional coach. In that role, I’ve had the opportunity to work with teachers in my building to coach them on English language learner instruction and strategy. I’ve reviewed teachers’ lessons and materials to see what we could do to make the text more accessible for students and I’ve guided them to implement essential vocabulary and build activities and visuals to help students understand the text. I have been able to support teachers with scaffolding text, building background knowledge and vocabulary, modeling EL instructional strategies, and implementing accommodations and modifications based on students’ needs.
Take Mrs. Wisser, an educator I’ve supported recently. Mrs. Wisser and I worked on selecting essential vocabulary from the social studies textbook and then pairing that vocabulary with the visuals of Egyptian pyramids, mummies, and hieroglyphs. We included videos so that students could see those same vocabulary terms represented in multimedia. Mrs. Wisser saw a change in her students, especially English language learners, who became much more engaged in reading because they no longer felt overwhelmed and lost among their peers.
Knowing the impact coaches like Mrs. Anderson have on teachers and their students, we must prioritize hiring and training them across Indiana’s districts. As our state moves toward full implementation of the science of reading, literacy coaches’ time must be fully focused on supporting teachers and improving literacy instruction. Additionally, our state leaders must continue to prioritize funding to sustain these roles in future. HB1242 not only outlines the priorities of the coach position, but enables districts to allocate funds to support the placement of these coaches. I hope we can continue to elevate the importance of coaching roles and prioritize funding such innovative staffing structures.
Roberto went on to become a confident and strong reader. This has set him for success in high school and beyond. Roberto is now a student at a community college, working on getting his business degree. Every student in Indiana needs the same level of support, including the team of teacher and literacy coach.
