Adolescent Literacy Project Day 1  

November 01, 2011
Dr. Kevin Feldman kicked off the Adolescent Literacy Project workshop series on September 7, 2011 with a focus on student engagement. The training day was spent exploring what Dr. Feldman refers to as an engagement "tool kit". There were numerous opportunities to experience engagement strategies as well as small group time for teachers to process how they could use them in their own classrooms.

According to research, feedback is the key component of learning something new. With this in mind, one of the goals for the Adolescent Literacy Project (ALP) is to incorporate opportunities to observe colleagues' classrooms and provide constructive feedback through Learning Walks. Dr. Feldman described this process as a method for creating "Collaborative Coherence" among teachers.

For years, teachers have gone to professional development workshops and learned research-based best practices, but as Dr. Feldman described there is an implementation gap between knowing and doing. He used an analogy to illustrate this point. All people know that if we eat right and exercise we will be healthier. The problem is in the implementation, "the doing". He asserts that we have this same challenge in implementing change in school classrooms. We hope this project will help bridge the implementation gap with built in support of teachers in their implementation efforts. Working together with schools we hope to assist teachers in the improvement of instruction and ultimately raise student achievement through training in and use of research-based strategies.

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