Preface

Thank heavens for the resiliency of youth and for the Vermont State Department of Education. As a new special education teacher, I was assigned a coach who provided "job-embedded" professional development. Sara was not much older than I, but she had the benefit of a master's degree and five years of teaching experience. She visited my classroom to help me review student data, plan instruction, and reflect on lessons learned. Those early days of support and focused, professional learning made all the difference for me, the classroom teachers I worked with, and my students. It also greatly influenced my perspective on the value of coaching. Later in my career, I came to be a mentor and coach to others.

I began to develop the Literacy Coaching Continuum Model described in this book in 1999, in collaboration with my colleague Elizabeth (Tiz) Powers, senior project associate from the former Region III Comprehensive Center at George Washington University, now known as the Mid-Atlantic Comprehensive Center. Over the past seven years, we have worked with many literacy coaches who have generously shared with us what their jobs involve, what challenges they face, and what professional supports they have found to be the most helpful in meeting the needs of a variety of individual teachers, each of whom is responsible for ensuring the literacy learning of living, breathing, individual students. Tiz and I have reflected on and refined our professional learning framework, which provides the guidelines and support a literacy coach needs to meet the challenges of the position.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Tiz, whose insight and generosity have made this book a richer document. I look forward to many more years of happy and productive collaboration. I would also like to thank Scott Willis, director of Books Acquisition and Development at ASCD. He was my first official introduction to the world of publishing, and I could not have asked for a more respectful and enthusiastic mentor. Thanks also to my editor, Katie Martin, who kept me focused, on time, and thoroughly engaged in the editing process. Finally, Darcy Bradley first showed an interest in this book as a worthwhile project. Her encouraging e-mails were instrumental in shaping the early stages of the book.

I hope you will use the information you find in this book. Share it with your colleagues, look up the primary resources I cite, and dig deeper for a clearer understanding of what you want your literacy coaching program to achieve. There is no "perfect" program or comprehensive cookbook for success, but there are some reliable recipes and guidelines for assembling them into appropriate menus. With some personalized tweaking, you can deliver a program that will satisfy the diverse professional learning needs of your colleagues and the literacy learning needs of their students.