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Ongoing Professional Development
If an innovation is to remain vital and dynamic, it must have a
system in place to ensure continued professional learning. The
ongoing professional development of teachers, teacher leaders, and
trainers is at the heart of Reading Recovery’s success and specified
in the
Standards and Guidelines for the United States and for
Canada. This continued learning keeps professionals up-to-date
on recent changes in Reading Recovery and ensures that professionals
at all levels deepen their knowledge about implementation and
teaching.
Reading Recovery Teachers
Reading Recovery teachers design and deliver daily lessons
tailored to the specific needs of each individual child. They make
moment-to-moment teaching decisions based on the evidence of each
child’s responses during the individual teaching sessions. Ongoing
professional development enables teachers to design optimal learning
opportunities for children with diverse needs and ensures that the
hardest-to-teach children have the most-skilled teachers. Without
ongoing learning and interaction with other professionals, the
effectiveness of the intervention is likely to be compromised.
The ongoing learning of Reading Recovery teachers is supported in
several ways. Trained teachers
- continue to teach a minimum of four Reading Recovery
children and learn from the students’ idiosyncratic routes to
literacy learning.
- participate in a minimum of six professional learning
sessions each year with a teacher leader and colleagues. At
least four of the sessions provide opportunities to observe and
discuss live teaching sessions (eight sessions with a minimum of
six teaching sessions in Canada).
- learn from teacher leader and colleague visits that involve
lesson observations and collaborative discussion of teaching
decisions.
- attend conferences and institutes.
- interact and collaborate with colleagues, administrators,
and school teams in their own schools.
Reading Recovery Teacher Leaders
Reading Recovery teacher leaders teach children, train Reading
Recovery teachers, and provide oversight for Reading Recovery
implementation within the schools. To fulfill this complex role,
teacher leaders engage in extended learning opportunities after the
initial year of professional development. Ongoing professional
development for teacher leaders is designed to ensure that they are
knowledgeable about Reading Recovery teaching practice and theory
and are able to facilitate teachers’ growth and development. In
addition, teacher leaders must be able to evaluate and communicate
the effectiveness of the teaching, advocate for the intervention,
explore related research, and provide guidance for implementation
decisions in and across schools.
The ongoing learning of Reading Recovery teacher leaders is
supported in several ways. Teacher leaders
- continue to learn from the children they teach and from
their work with Reading Recovery teachers.
- participate in professional development days provided by
regional university/institute trainers. Emphases include
refining their knowledge of teaching children, working with
teachers, and implementing Reading Recovery locally. Teacher
leaders also learn about new research and educational factors
that may have an impact on early literacy intervention.
- receive on-site visits from a university trainer.
- participate in a national Teacher Leader Institute (Teacher
Leader Forum in Canada) annually to ensure current knowledge
about all aspects of their roles.
- attend a regional conference or national conference or
institute each year.
- continue to learn about teamwork and collaboration so they
can effectively integrate Reading Recovery into their schools’
comprehensive plan for literacy learning.
Reading Recovery Trainers
Reading Recovery trainers provide the organizing structures for
Reading Recovery in the United States and Canada. They provide the
initial and ongoing professional development for teacher leaders,
support the implementations of Reading Recovery within their network
of affiliated sites, develop new implementations, monitor and
interpret student outcome data, review and conduct research,
maintain the integrity of Reading Recovery within their network of
sites, and advocate for Reading Recovery within their state or
region.
In order to fulfill their complex responsibilities for the
oversight of Reading Recovery, trainers are engaged in numerous
professional development venues. Reading Recovery trainers
- continue to learn from the children they teach and from
their work with Reading Recovery teacher leaders and teachers.
- meet with their colleagues in the
North American Trainers Group for extended professional
development at least twice each year.
- work within committee structures to study and share new
learning about teaching, professional development,
implementation, and research.
- engage in collaborative learning with their international
colleagues through the International Reading Recovery Trainers
Organization.
- work with academics and educational leaders outside Reading
Recovery to maintain an up-to-date perspective of research and
practice across the disciplines and across the educational
enterprise.
Support from RRCNA
RRCNA supports the development of professional learning
opportunities for Reading Recovery teachers, teacher leaders, and
trainers. As a
membership
association, the Council works closely with trainers and teacher
leaders to supplement and extend the existing system of professional
development offerings through
conferences and institutes,
web-based learning,
journals,
and products
and publications.
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