Minutes from April 30, 2008

The Reading and Literacy Committee met Wednesday afternoon to discuss the following topics:

1. Blogs & Student Writing

2. Literacy Coaches - concerns, responses, & what now

3. SIP Team Restructuring & Choosing a new R&L Committee Chair

4. Review past year's goals

Members present: Jim Smith (chair), Katarzyna Butryn, Debra Ridgner, and Ewa Adamska

Each point will be posted separately to allow members to view and post thoughts/comments separate from one giant post.

Celebrating Blogs!

To start the meeting, we briefly discussed the use of Blogs as a means for communication with others about what we do. Two articles, one from eSchool News discusses how blogging may be a means to help teens with their writing. The second was from Tom Parillo who sent an article on technology writing and teens to the English team. Both articles suggested that teens write often, but don't see their texting as writing. However, teens that were blogging were found to actually improve their writing because of the processes involved in formulating their thoughts. If you would like copies they're available in the reading office.

Literacy Coaches

We first discussed some of the concerns regarding the idea of Literacy Coaches. It seemed as though some people were under the impression that to volunteer to do this, you would allow yourself to be evaluated, or judged, by either administrators or worse - your peers. A quick review of the language of the memo clarified that it stated "classroom visits by their colleagues will be provided."

Despite this, there were only two teachers who responded to the memo and both have are concerned about their future employment for next year due to cut backs. The Committee discussed the implications of this including a brief discussion regarding whether our school was ready or not. This is an interesting point that I would encourage members to discuss.

Is Ridgewood ready for teachers to be trained as expert content-area literacy teachers?
On a final note regarding this, members present suggested that the idea of coaches be tabled until next fall when things are more settled. Are there other ideas?

SIP Restructuring & Committee Chair

Members were made aware of the changes that the SIP Team will be making for the next school year. Among those changes, Jim Smith announced his decision to co-chair the SIP Team with Michelle Kumor. Therefore, a new Reading and Literacy Chair must be selected before the end of the year. Committee members were asked to consider people already on the committee, or consider someone new.

Any thoughts?

Goals

Finally, the Committee reviewed the goals from last year. We discussed what we were able to accomplish, including items that were never on the goals list. Committee members were asked to review the goals, assess what was accomplished and why and which were not and why. In addition, members were asked to think about goals for next year.

If you like to discuss any of those accomplishments or what you wished we had accomplished, you're encouraged to do so here.