Coaching on Borrowed Time: Balancing the Roles of the Literacy Professional

Abstract

It is 7:30 a.m. on a Tuesday. Teachers do not have to be on campus for another 30 minutes, but a secondgrade teacher and Alida (second author), the school’s reading specialist, have a weekly meeting scheduled from 7:45 a.m. to 8:10 a.m. every Tuesday. Alida grabs her coffee, computer, and the handouts on guided reading that she plans to share with the teacher during their coaching conversation, and she heads down the hallway toward the teacher’s classroom. After a brief but productive coaching meeting, Alida switches roles from literacy coach to reading interventionist to serve a small group of thirdgrade students identified as having dyslexia. Following this, she again puts on her coaching hat and meets with a firstgrade teacher to assist in implementing a new word study program in her classroom. Immediately after working alongside this teacher, Alida retrieves a small group of firstgrade students for intensive Tier 3 reading intervention. Next, she switches roles once again to assess a secondgrade student for characteristics of dyslexia and compile the results so they can be shared with the campus 504 committee later in the week. Her morning ends in a meeting with the thirdgrade team of English language arts teachers. They work together to analyze a recent district assessment to plan for future instruction and reteaching. Most of Alida’s days follow a similar schedule of bouncing back and forth between the roles of literacy coach and reading interventionist. Lini (third author) and Alison (fourth author), who also served as their respective schools’ reading specialists, agree that their role required them to assume various positions: not only coach and interventionist but also facilitator of professional learning communities, collaborator in gradelevel curriculum planning meetings, trainer for campus professional development, and provider of numerous literacybased assessments. This hybrid role of interventionist and coach is not for the faint of heart. The successful balance demands careful planning, thoughtful time management, and a lot of flexibility. A literacy coach, as defined by Toll (2014), is someone who “partners with teachers for jobembedded professional learning that enhances teachers’ reflection on students, the curriculum, and pedagogy for the purpose of more effective decision making” (p. 10). Unlike other professional development models, literacy coaching, and thus the onetoone conversations that occur between the classroom teacher and the literacy coach, meet the teacher where they are to move them forward in their literacy practices (Eisenberg, 2016; Stover, Kissel, Haag, & Shoniker, 2011; Toll, 2017). Through coaching conversations, teachers are encouraged to think deeply about their students, reflect on their classroom practices, and take ownership of problem solving for issues that arise in their literacy block. Whereas literacy coaches primarily work with teachers, reading specialists largely work directly with students. According to the International Literacy Association (ILA; 2015), a reading specialist FEATURE ARTICLE