What's in it for Administrators?

School and district administrators who are concerned about the No Child Left Behind legislation and its emphasis on standards and research-based practices should consider participating in the Collaboratory. Administrators who support Collaboratory teams gain the following:

• access to research-based practices and supporting resources for helping students to meet content-area standards through literacy development

Research has shown that enhancing literacy skills improves learning throughout the content areas, helping students to meet demanding standards. The Collaboratory introduces teachers to the Adolescent Literacy Support Framework, a resource developed by the Northeast and Islands Regional Educational Laboratory that draws from research in cognitive psychology, linguistics, education, English language arts, second language acquisition, and reading. The Framework identifies proven practices for improving adolescent literacy, and the Collaboratory provides teachers with expert online assistance as they learn about and implement these practices.

• a core team of teacher leaders who can share their new enthusiasm and pedagogical skills with faculty throughout the school or district

Each participating team consists of an English/ language arts teacher, a social studies teacher, a science teacher, a math teacher, and a school- or district based literacy specialist or instructional leader. Team members participate in online exchanges with teachers from other schools, coaches who have already implemented proven adolescent literacy practices in their own classrooms, and an experienced literacy expert. They also work with each other face-to-face to complete Collaboratory activities. This combination of on-site collaboration and online exchange can help to strengthen the working relationship of school teams while developing their expertise around content-area literacy. During and after the Collaboratory, teachers from each team can serve as models and mentors for their content-area colleagues throughout the school.

Administrators who choose a multi-year participation plan multiply the impact of the initiative by developing local capacity to sustain and spread the effective teaching of content-area literacy school- or district-wide.