Literacy Celebration

This was the week of our Literacy Celebration. There were a few confusions along the way but all went smoothly at the event itself. There was a wide variety of projects. We have action research celebrations for several years for schools which were beyond their first few years of the project. Several years ago, we noticed one school Roberts Annex had a professional book club. We encouraged other schools to do this and now their are study groups and book clubs at many schools. What we really noticed at this celebration was evidence of teachers going deeper, really exploring their own learning and working in a team with their staff members. We saw teachers really looking at their practice and really looking at their students strengths and needs and figuring out next steps. We saw evidence of assessment guiding instruction. We saw more evidence of teachers really looking at their data, using their observations to fine tune instruction.
For us the hardest thing, is that we opened up the project to schools next year who hadn't been in a literacy project previously or who hadn't been for more than four years. We have many new schools wanting to join but due to an unexpected cut in my position (I am going back to the classroom and I am not being replaced) we are wondering how we are going to choose who can join the project and what other vehicles we can suggest for schools to pursue teacher research and collaboration. Hard choices.