Justice-Oriented Literacy Coaching

Toward Transformative Teaching

Misty Sailors, Logan Manning

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429655777
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Bildung Allgemein

This book explores notions of justice-oriented literacy coaching and offers a way of being in the world with young people, teachers, and communities that centers transformative coaching, teaching, and learning. It is intended to disrupt the traditional and historical positioning of literacy coaches in schools today. Through the lens of social justice and liberatory education, Sailors and Manning begin a dialogue with literacy coaches to help them reconsider their own roles and positions as agents of change in schools.

Using vignettes and stories to illustrate potential paths into emancipatory literacy learning environments, the authors present literacy as a socially-situated act of meaning-making. Accessible and inviting, this book provides pragmatic tools for literacy leaders to embody social justice, to grapple with big social concepts, to imagine possibilities, and to stimulate creative thinking with the teachers at their schools and with the students in their classrooms.

Intended for literacy coaches in grades K-6 and graduate students in literacy education, this book includes a wealth of resources and examples from real-world contexts, as well as spaces for the reader to interact and engage with the text through journaling and self-reflection.

1

Introduction to Justice-Oriented Coaching

We are excited that you are here, in this space with us, as we explore justice-oriented literacy coaching, what we believe to be at the heart of the transformation of classroom literacy practices. We hope that this book will offer literacy leaders (you) a way of “being” in the world with literacy teachers, a way that disrupts the traditional and historical positioning of literacy leaders in schools today. In fact, through the lens of social justice and liberatory education, we hope to begin a dialogue with you—one that supports you in reimagining your position as an agent of change as you disrupt hegemonic practices that oppress teachers and contribute to dehumanizing environments for children and youth. It is our hope that this book will support you in creating spaces for teachers to reclaim their agency. Throughout this book, we draw from several different intersecting sources, including scholars who write about transformative and liberatory pedagogies as well as wisdom gleaned from the many educators and children and youth with whom we have learned over the years.

As we were planning this book, we moved in and out of different ways of engaging you in a conversation about literacy leadership in today’s schools. Considering the title of the book and the ways in which we ourselves engage with literacy leaders and practicing teachers, we opted for a dialogic stance toward our work. We wanted to engage you in the same ways we encourage you to engage teachers—through dialogue and conversations about problems in practice. We have attempted to disrupt the traditional ways of talking to teachers that are represented in many professional books; rather, we want to have a conversation with you. We have actively tried to re-create our stance as literacy leaders and the way we frame our current work and relationships with literacy teachers throughout this book. In short, we believe that literacy leadership is grounded in dialogic spaces. We’ve taken that stance in this book and created (literal) spaces that can act as “quick writes.” We are hoping that these spaces invite you to write and to think through the invitations we offer you. There’s more on this in Section 1.4, “Organization of the Book,” below.

While we might have selected any aspect of instruction as a focus, we have elected to use the print environment found in classrooms as the centering point throughout this book. Because many teachers feel a sense of change within their own classrooms but not necessarily in schools at large, disruptions in the print environment can function as gateways to other forms of change and disruption in service of justice and equity. Additionally, texts in classrooms fulfill a unique relationship with children, youth, and their teachers in classrooms as literacy is not just a social practice represented by texts within a community; rather, texts and people in communities share an ontological relationship. Thus, texts (as part of a literacy practice) become mechanisms (with people) to “disrupt, tear up, and destabilize” (Brandt & Clinton, 2002, p. 354) hegemonic school and community practices.

This book will be a combination of theory, related background information, and pragmatic examples from real contexts with literacy leaders who work in schools that are culturally, linguistically, and socioeconomically diverse. This book will offer you opportunities to engage in reflexive thinking as a way of reimagining your practice. It will also offer you points for discussions with teachers as you work with them to move toward more justice-oriented instruction. We hope that this book will support you as you embody justice-oriented literacy coaching, grapple with big ideas related to working with teachers from this perspective, and reimagine possibilities with your teachers so that they can, ultimately, reimagine possibilities with children and youth in their classrooms.

1.1 Invitation to the Learning Space: Words Matter

In this text, we encourage you to reimagine the possibilities for learning spaces where children, youth, adults, and the text environment collaborate toward justice and liberation. We understand the role of coaches as bridge builders who support educators in moving their praxis, in catapulting from what is to what is possible when our justice-oriented imaginations guide our actions. Because we believe that words are powerful shapers of action, we will intentionally use language in this text that pushes you to rethink the practices and spaces that coaches, teachers, and learners co-create in schools. Our hope is that these words will help us see our work differently, which we hold as fundamental to justice-oriented coaching practice. As we proceed, we use the term praxis with intention to highlight the necessity of practitioner action grounded in theory in justice-oriented work. We hope to bridge the perceived gaps between theory and practitioner literature and to bring together strands related to literacy, coaching, and social justice. We understand the role of the literacy coach as central to justice-oriented change in schools.

Journaling Space 1.1 Thinking about Beliefs

We suggest that justice-oriented coaching is key to transforming schools and communities. This work begins with the application of problem-posing to our coaching practice. Building on Freire’s (2005) notion of problem-posing pedagogy, we will use the examples in this book as an invitation to engage in problem-posing literacy coaching. We ask you to think through these instances and to bring them to bear on the work you do in your local context and the change you seek to drive with your justice-oriented work. We invite you to share in the practices that have informed who we are becoming as justice-oriented literacy coaches and to grapple with some of the dilemmas that sparked shifts in our practices. We hope that through the invitational spaces we have created in this book, you will seize upon the transformative potential that exists in your coaching praxis.

Before we jump in, though, we want to pause and share with you some of the decisions we’ve made as we wrote this book. Some of our first choices were around language. The words we use have complex histories that can sometimes limit our potential for transformation. For example, take the seemingly benign word classroom found in the repertoire of many educators. When we unpack the etymology of this word, its meanings connote systems of stratification that have consequences for the potential of spaces we (as educators) share with young people. We have intentionally tried to avoid it in this book. Rather, we use the phrase learning space as a way of signaling a shift in perspective on how we view our role as coaches and the roles of the young people with whom teachers and justice-oriented literacy leaders work.

While this shift may seem insignificant, we see it as a disruption given the context of schooling that has historically positioned classrooms as spaces to classify and control people, particularly people of color and people who have been disenfranchised by economic policies that continue to shift wealth toward the wealthy. Used with intention, the words we choose in our justice-oriented coaching practice can catalyze a much-needed shift in paradigm. We ask that you (our reader) act as a collaborator in rethinking the language we use to describe our work. We are not asking that we abandon our current lexicon altogether, but that we pivot where possible from what is to what ought to be.

Likewise, this book is intended for literacy coaches working in K–6 settings; traditionally the young people in those settings are referred to as students. This word draws from the model of education colonizers used to indicate the passivity of young people in their learning experience. We reject the word and instead refer to the young people with whom we work in schools as children and youth. So that our writing stays as concise as possible, sometimes we only use the word children and sometimes we only use the word youth. However, it is our intention that educators (justice-oriented literacy coaches and teachers) think about the spaces in this book as inclusive of both those who are traditionally thought of as children (Grades K–4) and those who are traditionally thought of as youth (Grades 5 and 6). Short of physical differences, we believe that all young people are intellectual beings and have the potential to engage with us in ways that change their lives and our society.

Similarly, the word transformation carries many meanings, depending on the circles in which it is being used. For example, in some circles, transformation is used to mean personal change. In other circles, it is used to mean system changes, such as in the school reform literature. In other cases, it is used to signal grassroots movements to improve the human condition within and by communities. We believe that transformation is a way of “being” in the world—a world riddled with systems of oppression, including, but not limited to heteronormativity, white patriarchy, and capitalism run rampant. We recognize the tensions that arise from acting toward liberation despite knowing that we are operating within an oppressive system. Transformation includes rejecting the stance of “It is what it is” and leaning into what could be by actively reflecting on the ways in which our individual actions contribute to those systems of oppression.

We hope that our intentional language serves our purpose of making visible the tensions and dilemmas inherent in coaching toward critical praxis. This work requires that we identify contradictions, that we lean into discomfort, and that we practice resilience, recognizing that we may generate more questions than answers in our justice-oriented literacy coaching. This work necessitates that we wrestle with the very terms that have been used to describe our practice. An important facet of our understanding of justice-oriented literacy coaching is awareness of the power dynamics that are perpetuated by the language used in schools and in teacher education.

As in our daily work, here we also attempt to disrupt terms that have become commonplace in the field of education by re-centering those terms with more transformative concepts. And, in doing so, we (re)frame the ideology that surrounds those words. For example, we (re)frame words like teaching and instruction to phrases that are more inclusive of the people inside those spaces; rather than instruction, we talk about learning moves that teachers and children and youth make together. We (re)frame what teachers do when youth are seeming “off task” from redirecting to (re)centering, as (re)centering situates the youth and the teacher at the center of the learning move (versus the curriculum that often drives language related to “off task”).

Likewise, we think about the ways in which people inside these learning spaces come to agreement on what they want that space to be. In doing so, we (re)frame rules and pacts as norms and agreements, indicating the co-constructed nature of what people in those spaces want their relationships with each other to be. We also don’t think about how to “manage” bodies inside classrooms; thus we stay far away from anything that looks or sounds like classroom management. Rather, we (re)frame this into thinking about how to organize for learning spaces that are grounded in respect for the rights of people, especially those who have been marginalized and oppressed, including children and youth. Similarly, we don’t forefront student-centered as a term that drives our work; we operate from a place of freedom-centered.

While these are not exhaustive lists of the words and phrases we intentionally use throughout the book, they are exemplary of the decisions we made as we were writing. In doing so (and we ask that you join us), we (re)frame our ways of interacting with teachers and children and youth. As you move through this space with us and try on different ways of being and seeing, we ask that you take stock of your entry points into your thinking and actions. To support you along the way, we’ve created spaces for you to think about engaging the teachers with whom you work. We call these conversation starters; they are not the only topics of conversation you might want to pick up and have with others in the spaces you share at your school, but they may also be an entry point for you.

Conversation Starter 1.1 Disrupting Hegemonic Terms

1.2 Disrupting Traditional Models of Literacy Coaching → Moving toward Justice-Oriented Literacy Coaching and Leadership

At the core of our coaching framework is a belief that all people are wise and resourceful. Justice-oriented literacy coaching requires a willingness on the part of the coach to go deep, to lean into tensions, and to problematize hegemonic ways of being that have become unquestioned as commonplace in teaching and learning. The justice-oriented literacy coach has a dynamic role that involves building relational trust, convoking their own imagination and that of others, and being willing to engage in courageous dialogue. This transformative work requires a nimble stance and an awareness of productive struggles and spaces that invite daring possibilities. These are not the attributes of coaches in traditional school- and district-based models of coaching.

Traditional literacy coaches often play a policing role, ensuring that teachers demonstrate fidelity to district mandates (Sailors, Hoffman, & International Literacy Association, 2018). In this traditional model, literacy coaches may take a more directive stance in which they push teachers to comply with particular pacing or curricular models. This coaching paradigm is built upon a deprofessionalized view of teachers as vehicles for standardized materials and instructional practices.

Often, mandated programs appear in teachers’ learning spaces in the form of textbooks, teacher’s guides, and instruction that are presented under the guise of “best practices.” These programs are often controlled and supervised by coaches, or administrators monitor the “delivery” of the program. Programs such as these (and the ways in which they are implemented) function as tools of a neoliberal state—they funnel public funding to private corporations and are framed as strategies that ostensibly help support student learning (Kumashiro, 2008). In reality, they function to “carefully control and monitor the content, form, and ideological perspective of the instruction that students receive, while requiring constant monitoring and surveillance to ensure conformity” (Picower, 2011, p. 1113). Traditional literacy coaches might initiate coaching conversations with questions such as, “What successes have you had with [mandated program]?”

This is not our stance toward what we call a justice-oriented literacy coach. Justice-oriented literacy coaches start with a more open-ended approach that relies upon the wisdom of the educators with whom they work. We believe justice-oriented coaches are professionals who work with teachers in the service of nurturing possibilities for children and youth who have experienced educational injustice. The role of a justice-oriented literacy coach is to advocate for teachers who are breaking with traditional practices that are often oppressive in nature. The justice-oriented literacy coach may initiate a conversation with a teacher by asking, “What are you noticing in your learning space right now?” or “What are you concerned about?” “What has surprised you?” or “What unexpected success have you experienced?” It is in this spirit that justice-oriented literacy coaches and teachers create spaces of shared goals grounded in liberation.

1.3 Peering Into Praxis: Meeting Nina and Contextualizing Her Work Space

In this section, we introduce you to a literacy coach (Nina) and teachers with whom she works across two elementary schools. Space only allows us to focus on these teachers and their coach. In so many ways this coach and these t...