Project # 2

Name of Intern: Amanda Brady

Date: 1/18/14
Site Supervisor: Addie Kaufman
University Supervisor: Jen Peduzzi
1. Title of the proposed project: Literacy in All Contents
2. Overview: The creation of a Literacy Team will help staff members identify
areas of strength in literacy. Staff members will be provided professional
development and support in implementing more literacy driven questioning.
3. Rationale: This project is important to our school as we are working to
implement PARRC and ensure our students are college and career ready. In order
to adapt and change in this revolving world of changing education we must use
new strategies. Literacy strategies sometimes are challenging for high school
content specific teachers, as we were not trained on how to read, decode text, and
comprehension skills for students. This particular project will give staff members
insight on how they can use literacy strategies in their own classroom and within
their individual contents.
4. Outcomes: I hope to encourage teachers to utilize new and innovative ways to
reach students in literacy across all content areas. The goal is to infuse more
PARCC like questions in the classroom for students to feel comfortable and ready
to take the test.
5. Alignment: This project is aligned to the following leadership standards:
a. National Standards for Educational Leaders (ISLLC, 2008)
i. Learning Leadership, an education leader promotes the success
of every student by advocating, nurturing, and sustaining a school

culture and instructional program conducive to students learning

and staff professional growth.
b. Maryland Instructional Leadership Framework (MSDE, 2005)
i. Outcome 3: Monitor the alignment of curriculum, instruction,
and assessment. This particular outcome is evident by the
principals desire to ensure student work is appropriately
challenging and demonstrates new learning. Utilizing these
literacy strategies will allow assessments that will measure student
mastery of the content standards.
6. Indicators of Success:
a. I will use qualitative and quantitative data from a survey given to the
Instructional Team Leader to evaluate how the implementation is going.
b. I will give a ticket out at the end of the staff meeting to identify the
strengths and weaknesses of the afternoon session.
7. Sustainability
a. This project will provide support and guidance on how to use PARCC
questioning and literacy to improve student scores.
8. Resources
a. I will work with a HCPSS Literacy Coach, as well as, my University
Supervisor to collaborate and gain strong activities/discussion questions/
etc. to utilize at our school.
9. Strategies
a. Attend two Literacy Professional Developments with the County Literacy
Leadership team.
b. Meet with our schools Literacy Coach, Margaret Brothman to devise a
plan.
c. Work on creating a plan to implement what is learned at the Professional
Development sessions to the entire staff.
d. Run a spring PD with the entire staff (4/13/15).
e. Create a ticket out to gain a gauge of the staffs engagement towards the
PD. Hoping to challenge them to use something from the Staff Meeting
before the end of the year.

10. Assessment
a. This is a difficult project to assess as it is not complete. I
have completed a c of the strategies timeline, but I am
actually implementing the staff professional development
on Monday, April 13, 2015. I do feel like the outcomes I set
forth are partially reached even without doing the entire
project yet. In the fall I was able to implement a small
piece of PARCC testing questions in a brief PD that I did not
think was not very successful because we did not require
teachers to implement the questions in any way.
Sometimes our PD becomes tedious because there is no
real direction with the outcome. In doing this project I feel
I have had the experience to delegate jobs and work on
finding the best people to help me out. As a leader, I feel it
is important to know the right people to ask and turn to
them for their support. This would not have gone well if I
decided to plan it myself and implement the Professional
Development for the staff. It would not be authentic and it
certainly would not be as valuable as it is from an expert in
the field. I also was able to learn that bringing people in,
from outside the building, allows staff to relate differently
and feel more confident in what they are doing. This was a
successful project up until this point and the true test will
be when we deliver it in front of the entire staff.
11.

Reflection

The context of this project was to implement PARRC and ensure our students
are college and career ready. In order to adapt and change in this revolving world of
changing education we must use new strategies. Literacy strategies sometimes are
challenging for high school content specific teachers, as we were not trained on how to

read, decode text, and comprehension skills for students. This particular project will give
staff members insight on how they can use literacy strategies in their own classroom and
within their individual contents. However, while doing this project I was able to
revaluate the original rationale and use data and graphics to support a classroom strategy
across all content areas. This particular area is my strength because I an very good about
getting input. It is one of my top five Gallup strengths. I find pleasure in searching for
the experts, looking into the best options and ideas, and surveying people to get input.
When I was able to work on this project, I was able to utilize my strengths. I was able to
learn that my strengths can play to my advantage and when I use them I can do great
things.
Positive and negative both came out of this experience. I have been working
closely with the Teacher Development Liaisons (TDLs) throughout the year and through
that experience I have come to realization that staff do not enjoy or want to partake in any
sort of Professional Development. It is a tough sale. I was able to positively take away
that if you are engaged it does not mean everyone else is engaged nor do they want to
spend the time on it. I have also learned to accept that you are never going to make
everyone happy. This particular experience was not as challenging as the first project,
and I was able to find the good in the planning and preparation. It was a matter of this
needed to be done and staff needed to attend without a choice.
The challenges I experienced in this project were few and far between because it
was something that I could attain in the sense of it had to be done, staff members have to
attend, the feedback, regardless, is usually the same, and I truly feel the PD planned is
useful and worthwhile. In the future, I would like to continue to implement items that
staff members honestly would use throughout the year in their classrooms.