By Stephen Smith, The Hechinger Report
Jandella Faulkner crouches beside a table of busy third graders in Jennifer Larsen’s class at Edison Elementary School. The students have pencils in hand, outlines spread around them, and a story about penguins and otters in progress.
Faulkner stands to call across the room: “Loving how this group is already talking, Ms. Larsen.” Then she swoops down on another table of young authors.
Jandella Faulkner is a teaching coach in the Long Beach, Calif., school district. Her job is to train a select group of teachers at Edison Elementary, including Jennifer Larsen, in a new literacy curriculum called Write From The Beginning. It’s part of a district-wide training system that relies on teachers working with each other to improve classroom practices. So, with Faulkner’s help, Larsen and the other site coaches at Edison train their colleagues at the school how to use Write From The Beginning in their own classrooms. Continue reading…