Reading Apprenticeship

Sustaining Evidence-Based Literacy Learning and Leadership

Dec 4 webinar invitation

Webinars

Sustaining Evidence-Based Literacy Learning and Leadership

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Are you looking to enhance your secondary program and student outcomes? Join us December 4 for a lively conversation about instructional leadership and the power of Reading Apprenticeship to bring about continuous improvement for both teachers and students in all subject areas.

Facilitated by leaders from two WestEd teams, Reading Apprenticeship and Educational Leadership and Systems Design, this webinar will feature a panel of educators from across the nation.

Key Takeaways:

  • Gain insights from experienced educators and administrators who have successfully implemented Reading Apprenticeship in their schools, districts, and states.
  • Discover practical strategies for building trust with, and among, teachers and students and establishing a shared culture of learning.
  • Learn about Reading Apprenticeship and its proven track record of improving student literacy and academic success.

Session Details:

Session Topics:

  • Introduction:
    • Experience the Reading Apprenticeship approach
    • Highlights from Reading Apprenticeship research
    • How School and District Administrators Support Reading Apprenticeship
  • Breakout Sessions:
    • Addressing the Needs of Diverse Learners
    • Overcoming Challenges to Implementation in Large Systems
    • Ensuring Sustained Support for Instructional Improvement

Register here

Panelists:

  • Dr. Kevin Gallick, Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services, Rich Township 227 IL
    Dr. Kevin Gallick, Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services for Rich Township HS District 227, leads the district’s focus on literacy and instruction. He believes that literacy is a critical resource for personal transformation and a powerful lever for school and district improvement efforts. Dr. Gallick witnessed the power of literacy firsthand as an educator in Chicago Public Schools for 17 years, including 8 years as a principal of a large neighborhood high school.
  • Rachel Goisovich, Coordinator, Secondary ELA/Literacy, Division of Curriculum and Instruction Baltimore County Public Schools, MD
    Rachel Goisovich works for Baltimore County Public Schools as the Coordinator of Secondary English Language Arts and Literacy. She previously served as the disciplinary literacy specialist for grades 4-10, where she partnered with educators across all disciplines to support students in deepening their literacy skills. Goisovich believes that every student deserves the opportunity to expand their thinking and develop critical thinking skills to become lifelong literacy learners.
  • Kindel Launer, Literacy Teacher on Special Assignment, EL Coordinator, Palo Alto High School, CA
    As a Literacy Teacher on Special Assignment and English Language Specialist, Kindel Launer brings a wealth of experience from her time as a high school English teacher. With a strong research interest in reading comprehension and student well-being in secondary classrooms, she is committed to enhancing literacy outcomes for all students. Launer brings a deep understanding of the intersection between literacy and student well-being.
  • Diana Mansour Ed.S, ELD Specialist, Fordson High School, Dearborn, MI
    Diana Mansour serves as the English Language Development (ELD) Specialist at Fordson High School in Dearborn, Michigan. With over 17 years of teaching experience (including in Lebanon), Mansour is passionate about understanding the communities where she works and how they make meaning of the world. She is also trained as a Reading Apprenticeship facilitator with WestEd and has presented about her work at national and local conferences.
  • Julie Orzechowski, ELA Instructional Coach, Dearborn, MI
    Julie Orzechowski serves as a facilitator for Reading Apprenticeship and an instructional coach for 6th-8th grade ELA in Dearborn, Michigan. She was first introduced to Reading Apprenticeship as a teacher at Fordson High School in 2013, where it transformed her instructional practices. During the 2018-19 school year, Orzechowski completed facilitation training for the program and has continued to support other educators since that time.
  • Dr. Harley Ramsey, St. Mary’s Area School District, PA
    Dr. Harley Ramsey is the Superintendent of the St. Mary’s Area School District. He started his career in education as an agricultural education teacher before spending six years as a director of multi-state operations in the electrical and lighting service industry. Since returning to education, Dr. Ramsey has served in multiple leadership roles in K-12 and higher education with a “true north” commitment of supporting rural high-poverty communities.
  • Lauren Spenceley, Secondary ELA Specialist, Arizona Department of Education
    As the Secondary English Language Arts Specialist with the Arizona Department of Education (ADE), Lauren Spenceley provides support to districts, schools, and educators with implementation of Arizona’s English Language Arts Standards, particularly in grades 6-12. Prior to joining ADE in 2020, she was a secondary ELA classroom teacher for over 14 years. Spenceley sits on the board of the Arizona English Teachers’ Association.

WestEd facilitator:

Stephanie Patterson

Stephanie is the Director of Partnership Development for the Reading Apprenticeship team. She is a former elementary school teacher with over 25 years’ experience in the field of education including teacher coaching, assisting with curriculum selection, and providing professional development.  Stephanie obtained her BA in Psychology from Clark Atlanta University and her MA in Education from Pepperdine University.

Who Should Participate:

  • K–12 Educators
  • Administrators and CIPD leaders
  • Instructional Coaches
  • All interested in enhancing instruction at the secondary level

Register here

Cultivating Classroom Community Through Literacy

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Join WestEd literacy leaders Linda Friedrich and Heather Howlett  on Oct. 15 as they discuss practical ways to create a welcoming classroom where every student feels valued, heard, and motivated to read and learn. Participants will leave the webinar with ideas and techniques to implement immediately in their classrooms.

Date: October 15th, 2024

Time: 12:00 – 12:30 pm PST

Audience: Administrators, Principals, Teachers, Coaches

Learn more and register here

Reading Apprenticeship 101 “Making it Real” Workshop Series Summer 2024

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In this free, workshop series, current and past participants in Reading Apprenticeship 101 have the opportunity to develop and share plans for core routines: Establishing Community Agreements, Personal Reading History, Think Aloud and Talking to the Text, and Analyzing Disciplinary Text Demands.

Participants will:

  • Connect with a professional community of readers, educators, and learners to share knowledge and ideas
  • Revisit the rationale for metacognitive conversation and core Reading Apprenticeship routines to support deep learning and disciplinary literacies
  • Begin planning to “make it real”–to try out or refine a core routine
  • Give and receive feedback on plans for making it real

Register Here

Tuesday, June 18, 10:00-11:30AM PDT: Making it Real: Setting Norms

Tuesday, July 2, 10:00-11:30AM PDT: Making it Real: Personal Reading History

Tuesday, July 16, 10:00-11:30AM PDT: Making it Real: Think Aloud and Talking to the Text

College workshop on May 12 – everyone welcome!

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College Educators Share Approaches to Scaffolding Engagement and Critical Thinking

Many faculty feel that student engagement has been on the decline since the educational disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic.  In a workshop series this spring titled “Reviving College Reading in Today’s Learning Environments,” college educators are sharing how the Reading Apprenticeship framework helps them navigate today’s complex landscape and to scaffold deeper engagement, critical thinking, and sense of belonging as students transition to college.   Sign up now to join the last session on May 12.

May 12, 10:00-11:30amPST:  “A Literacy Garden: Plant the Seeds and Watch Your Students and Colleagues Grow” will focus on how to engage colleagues in conversations and professional learning communities centered on our teaching practice and disciplinary literacy.

Lora Bagwell, Assistant Dean of English and Associate Reading Professor at Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville, TN, will share her journey of bringing Reading Apprenticeship to her courses, students, colleagues, and campus. She will share the successes and challenges of the process and provide practical advice for planting your own literacy garden.

College educators across levels and subject areas are invited to explore how the Reading Apprenticeship framework can help orchestrate active, culturally responsive, and engaged learning experiences for our students.

The first three workshops in the series highlighted the way that educators from different contexts utilize Reading Apprenticeship to support student learning.

The series started with “Reading to Learn Across the Disciplines:  An Introduction.”   Participants reviewed the Reading Apprenticeship framework and engaged in text-based metacognitive conversations which activated some of the core concepts that animate Reading Apprenticeship learning environments, such as that reading is problem solving, that everybody sometimes feels like an “insider” or an “outsider” with certain texts and discourses, and that educators tend to develop blind spots to their insider status when it comes to the texts in their discipline.  

The second workshop, facilitated by Dr. Laura Garofoli, Professor of Psychological Science at Fitchburg State University in Massachusetts, focused on the power of metacognitive question-posing to drive students’ persistence with and processing of challenging texts. In “The Reading Apprenticeship Framework as a Roadmap Back to Student Self-Confidence and Re-engagement in Our ‘Post-COVID’ World,” Dr.Garofoli described her methodology of “teaching metacognition as giving honor to the thoughts, feelings, questions, and connections that arise as students engage with learning materials. Anything that your brain gives you counts!”  Participants reviewed brain-based research highlighting the importance of student-generated questions for learning, and then practiced mapping their “thoughts, feelings, questions and connections” with a text set focused on the impact of sleep on learning.

The third workshop also introduced participants to deeper scaffolds for helping students generate connections which lead to academic engagement.  In “Scaffolding Thinking for Deeper Academic Conversations and Writings,” Caren Kongshaug, a College Readiness Instructor from Bellingham Technical College in Bellingham, WA, presented several notetakers she has devised to support three distinct “thinking pathways”: 

Nika Hogan, Reading Apprenticeship College Coordinator and the organizer of the workshop series, says that the sessions so far provide support for dealing with the ways the world has changed while reinforcing the ways that learning stays the same.  “It’s still about transparency:  these are the rules of engagement; this is how we are going to work together.  It’s still about creating a culture of inquiry and providing opportunities for students to dig into text and to construct their own understanding.  It’s still about asking learners to share their thinking, but what we are seeing from the innovations that these faculty are sharing is that a slightly deeper level of scaffolding helps today’s students marshall the focus to make connections to text that they can build on for academic purposes.” 

For more information or to begin your own journey with Reading Apprenticeship, register for the My 12 workshop, or explore these resources:

Reading for Understanding, third edition

Reading Apprenticeship 101

Reviving College Reading in Today’s Learning Environments: A Reading Apprenticeship Workshop Series

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What is the role of reading in deep learning? What counts as “reading” in our digitally-trending culture? This free workshop series invites college educators to explore how the Reading Apprenticeship framework can help us navigate today’s complex landscape and orchestrate active, culturally responsive, and engaged learning experiences for our students.

For more information, click here to visit our services page.

Learn from Reading Apprenticeship Practitioners

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The Reading Apprenticeship Pandemic Lessons for Higher Ed Instructors summer 2021 webinar series was created in reflection of learnings made during the unique challenges of 2020. Three Reading Apprenticeship practitioners and college instructors volunteered to share helpful adaptations they made for their online classrooms: Tiffany Ingle, whose presentation is linked here, and Lauren Servais and Ed Ferrari, whose presentations are linked below.

Answering the Call to Be Culturally Sustaining: Designing an Introductory Sequence to Build Community Online

Presented on August 17, 2021 by Lauren Servais, English professor at Santa Rosa Junior College, 3CSN Coordinator, and Reading Apprenticeship Practitioner.

 

Digital Annotation in First Year Composition: Into the Pandemic & Beyond

Presented on August 31, 2021 by Ed Ferrari, Assistant Professor of English at Crafton Hills College and former reading tutor and TEFL instructor.