by Claudine Kennicutt and Dallas Lewandowski
You might think that LETRS is all about just that…letters, right? For the two of us, this year has actually been a lot more about NUMBERS!! And we are pleased to share those with you in this report.
During the 2022-23 school year, ESU 10 was able to support 5 LETRS Cohorts. As Certified LETRS Faciliators, the two of us were able to lead 4 of these Cohorts, totaling 16 in-person training dates. Susan Evans, former ESU 10 employee and National LETRS Facilitator, was also able to provide support for our 5th Cohort, which consisted of an additional 4 sessions.
When you add all of these participants together, the NUMBERS are actually quite impressive. Overall, we were able to support approximately 250 teachers in our service area, representing 25 of our 33 public schools. We have continued to see a need for this professional development, and have begun preparing for the 2023-24 school year as well. We will again have 5 LETRS Cohorts, totaling approximately 205 teachers, and 22 in-person trainings. Because of the high number of training sessions, Dallas is focusing the majority of her time on Volume 1, while Claudine is supporting Volume 2. For our multiple district Cohort, we will again present together.
Along with our trainings, we had the opportunity to partner with Wayne State College to provide continuing education credits for participants. Teachers were able to receive 3 credits through WSC for the completion of each of the two volumes of LETRS at the rate of $75 per credit hour. During this inaugural year, we had 61 participants take advantage of this opportunity. We were responsible for monitoring and recording progress, reading submitted Bridge to Practice work, maintaining attendance records, and submitting final grades in May. We are planning to continue this partnership during the 2023-24 school year, and continue to have a high degree of interest from teachers.
Throughout the past year, we have received a significant amount of positive feedback about LETRS. We asked a few of these individuals to share their thoughts with us.
Below are a few from teachers AND administrators.
“LETRS taught me so much about Reading, Language and Spelling. It gives tools to help with that deeper dive to finding student gaps in their learning and tells exactly what skills we need to support. I could take the classes again because there is so much to take in. “ - Classroom Teacher
“LETRS helped my teaching drastically. I was able to explain to kids why we spell the way we do. I knew more about phonemic awareness and phonics. I just felt like there were a lot of holes for myself that I was able to fill.” - Classroom Teacher
“LETRS Training allows me to support my staff in their learning of a new reading curriculum resource. It is also validating the decision to move to a program that mirrors the approach of LETRs and best practice.” - Administrator
“This knowledge is an investment in a district’s staff AND students! This knowledge empowers staff to know more and do BETTER with any ELA program that a district may be using.” - Administrator
A few photos from our year:
ESU 10 Volume 2 participants who completed their final unit!
Our large ESU 10 4-District Cohort celebrated on their last day of Volume 1.
Lexington teachers created Bumper Stickers (activity from Adaptive Schools) on their final day!