Reading Apprenticeship

We’re hiring! Opportunity for literacy and learning expert

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We’re hiring! Opportunity for literacy and learning expert

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WestEd is seeking a Senior Research Associate in Literacy grow the quality and impact of Reading Apprenticeship professional learning services.

This position will work with our literacy leadership and professional learning design teams to manage large Reading Apprenticeship projects in multiple states, and to create new services to support teachers at the secondary and post-secondary level. We are seeking someone with expertise in reading comprehension as well as a track record of securing funding and managing projects supported by government agencies or foundations.

Read more and apply here!

How do you center student voice and experience in classroom instruction?

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Dr. Cynthia Greenleaf puts teaching and learning in context

This summer, as hundreds of teachers take the time further their practice via Reading Apprenticeship professional learning, our Co-Founder Dr. Cynthia Greenleaf reflects on the field of adolescent literacy and the new edition of Reading for Understanding.

Check out this feature Q&A with Cyndy in WestEd’s “Insights and Impact” and learn about the assets-based framework that “helps both teachers and students see the resources and knowledge they already have, and how these are central to accelerating literacy and learning.”

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.

Read Our Chapter in this New Professional Learning Book

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Anyone interested in literacy and professional learning will find great value in this 2023 book edited by Dana Robertson, Leigh Hall, and Cynthia Brock. The introductory chapter provides a concise overview of the essential ‘ingredients’ and challenges involved in high quality professional learning. Each of the following chapters include program descriptions, case studies, and research on transformational teacher learning initiatives situated in culturally, linguistically and geographically diverse places. The chapters are grouped into two parts: 1) Professional Learning as Reflexive Growth-in-Practice and 2) Professional Learning In/Through/With Social Networks and Communities.

Reading Apprenticeship is featured in a chapter written by Cynthia Greenleaf, Gayle Cribb, Mira-Lisa Katz and Mary Stump “Professional Learning Designed to Cultivate Continuous Learning and Innovation.” The authors describe Reading Apprenticeship’s design principles, and they illustrate the power of ‘leading from practice’ by describing the journey of Gayle Cribb.

For a limited time, you can download our chapter at no charge, but we highly recommend you check out the book.

“This book conveys leading-edge ideas. It offers practical ideas for professional learning that ensure teachers and students alike are supported to learn and to sustain their learning….It shares insights that will make such professional growth a reality. This powerful work is a major contribution to the development of teacher learning.”
  — Diane Lapp, EdD, San Diego State University

Happy New Year from Reading Apprenticeship!

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Dear Friends:

The Reading Apprenticeship team salutes the work you all have done in 2022 to improve the learning experiences of secondary and post–secondary students.

It has been so gratifying to work together in person, meeting with partners and colleagues at school sites, conferences, and professional learning events. We have had the great pleasure of working with more than 3,000 educators in districts and college campuses all over the country this year, and we marvel at the work everyone is doing to create supportive, challenging, and text–rich learning experiences for both teachers and students in all subject areas.

As 2022 comes to a close and a new year of learning begins, we want to express our gratitude for your continued partnership and the work you do with students and colleagues every day. We look forward to sharing many new resources and learning experiences with you in 2023.

Warm wishes for a wonderful holiday season and a happy, healthy new year!

Sincerely,

The Reading Apprenticeship Team at WestEd