Fluency Lessons

Chunking

Road to Success

Poetry Month

Bulletin Board

by Rebecca McKay
Director, Literacy and Professional Development

As the dust of Winter Conference 2008 settles….
To focus this article on Reflection and Response, I borrow a line from teacher researcher Betty Shockley Bisplinghof, who is quoted in Living the Questions: A Guide for Teacher Researchers (Hubbard & Power, 1999).

“Suzanne Lipsett in her book Surviving a Writer’s Life (1994) wrote, ‘I am not an intellectual and never have been; only, as both reader and writer, an intuitional, a responder from the deepest heart of the brain’ (xviii). I worry and wonder at this rejection of companionship between intellectual and inspired understandings. Must one necessarily eliminate the other? Or, as I propose, could response from the “deepest heart of the brain” be the most intellectual challenge of all?” (Hubbard & Power, 1999, p. 175)

Bisplinghoff goes on to say “positions of strength are formed from the intense response that is possible when the emotional and the intellectual are encouraged to scaffold for each other.” These quoted words describe what the Literacy Fellows and coaches did as they reflected on the impact of the 2008 Winter Conference on the schools they love.

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Eye on Leadership
Lessons from the World’s Best Performing School Systems

by Edna Varner
Cornerstone Leadership Associate

Working with eight Springfield principals who have started meeting as a network after each Focus Group, I have become re-energized about delving deeper into what characterizes the “enabling role” of school leadership. These principals have had excellent leadership development in the district and a walk through the schools affirms it.  Listen to children at Indian Orchard and Kensington and you know that Deb Beglane and Margaret Thompson make instruction a priority. Sit in on a leadership team meeting with Gwen Page or Diane Gagnon and it is obvious that they understand what it means to develop and share leadership.   Mention a journal article or book and Tara Clark at Lynch has either read it or will have it read by the next visit.  Mary Ellen Petruccelli asks the important questions and flexes her schedule so that she can search for answers with colleagues during the 90 minutes principals carve out for collaboration about once a month.  Talk to any of these principals and it is unlikely you will finish a conversation without some mention of the support they get from Deb Lantaigne and Gloria Williams (Springfield Foundation School principals), Dr. Southworth, or others at the district level.

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