Jennifer Allen

In this second edition of Becoming a Literacy Leader: Supporting Learning and Change, author Jennifer Allen reflects on her work as a literacy specialist and how the role has evolved in the decade since she wrote the first edition. Her experiences can apply to all school leaders including principals, coaches, teachers, support staff, and office administrators. Allen focuses on three ideas to describe her work: Layered Leadership, the multitude of supports in place for teachers to encourage learning and change within schools; Shared experiences that develop community and develop common understanding of practices, curriculum, and assessment; Importance of 'rowing in the same direction' in that literacy coaches and leaders stay interconnected and aligned to the goals of the school. Allen knows the challenges of teachers face and advocates literacy coaches implement these layers of support within a school, including in-class support, curriculum support and assessment, study group facilitation, and the cultivation of teacher leadership. In Becoming a Literacy Leader, she provides an explicit framework for implementing these layers of coaching and explains how administrators can use the literacy leader position to build and sustain change within their schools. This book will be the road map for how literacy leaders and coaches approach their work with purpose and intention. Online videos that accompany the book bring the text alive by showing readers what coaching looks and sounds like.

Supporting Learning and Change

Becoming a Literacy Leader

With depth, humor, and raw honesty applied to the experience of slowly losing a loved one to cancer, BONE KNOWING offers satisfaction to readers who want to laugh, cry, and re-think important issues in their own relationships.

A True Story of Coming to Life in the Face of Impending Loss

Bone Knowing

Bill Burns

Dan Adler

In her Foreword to the publication, Dannys Montes de Oca Moreda recognizes that the after-effect of Burns' work is deeply disillusioning, breaking up and foreclosing the harmonious unity of identity, micro and macrocosmic alike. Curator and art historian Dan Adler draws attention to the intrinsic satire informing Burns' work: a fondness for revering the meaningless while casting doubt on the venerable. Lastly, art critic Jennifer Allen uncovers some of the forces at work within Burns' narrativisation of his personal life and reflection on his role as an artist, asserting that the act of forgetting is structural to Burns' overall narrative composition. Hans-Ulrich Obrist Hear Us also includes a first-person narrative by Burns, telling the story of his life through episodes that, although seemingly incongruous, have played a formative role in the development of the artist's career. This history, like memory, is less contiguous than spontaneous, more preoccupied with prophecies and mood swings than the sterileness of factuality.

Hans Ulrich Obrist Hear Us

Becoming a Literacy Leader chronicles the work of Jennifer Allen, an elementary teacher who moved to a new school and a new job as a literacy specialist, and found herself tackling everything from teacher study groups to state-mandated assessment plans. The book is rooted in Jennifer's belief that teachers know what they need when it comes to professional development in literacy, and the best literacy leaders are those who listen to and respect the educators in their midst. Grounded in research but thoroughly practical, Jennifer shares advice on: organizing a literacy room with resources for classroom teachers, including book lists, bins of children's books tied to craft and strategy lessons, bulletin board ideas, and files with instructional materials; developing intervention classrooms for struggling readers and writers built on collaboration between teachers and literacy specialists; setting up assessment notebooks for teachers, and preparing new and veteran teachers for student assessments across grades; creating model programs for dealing with schoolwide problems like reading fluency, and then moving from the pilot to implementation in many classrooms; coaching new and veteran teachers in the latest literacy practices, without taking on the role of expert; analyzing and using books, videos and journals in professional development programs; infusing routine staff meetings with discussions of new literacy curricula; leading teacher study groups using a variety of formats; finding and budgeting money for professional development programs in literacy; protecting time and scheduling priorities, to ensure the literacy specialist position doesn't become a "catch-all" for the random needs of teachers or administrators. At a time when all administrators are urged to be literacy leaders, this insider's view helps to define what leadership looks like and shows how to create an environment that fosters professional development. Jennifer Allen shares the balance leaders struggle with, as they strive to support and honor the fine practices of teachers, even as they nudge colleagues to improve their literacy instruction. Ultimately, Becoming a Literacy Leader is a hopeful book, an optimistic and realistic portrait of life in schools among teachers committed to doing their jobs well.

The first edition of Becoming a Literacy Leader chronicled Jennifer's work as she moved to a new school and a new job as a literacy specialist and found herself tackling everything from teacher study groups to state-mandated assessment plans. The new edition of her book is a thoughtful, reflective evolution of her work as she rethinks how her identity and role as a literacy leader have evolved in the ten years since she wrote the first edition. She focuses on three ideas to describe her work: the concept of layered leadership, shared experiences in making meaning together, and the importance of rowing in the same direction as a school community. Jennifer firmly believes that teachers know what they need when it comes to professional development, and she describes the layers of support that coaches can implement within a school, including in-class support, curriculum support and assessment, study group facilitation, and the cultivation of teacher leadership. She provides an explicit framework for implementing these layers of coaching and explains how administrators can use the literacy leader position to build and sustain change within their schools. Literacy leaders and coaches can use this book as a road map for how to approach their work with purpose and intention. Online videos that accompany the book bring the text alive by showing readers what coaching looks and sounds like.

Hans den Hartog Jager

Maria Roosen

For over 2000 years, book burners have laid their torches to millions of books condemned as heretical, blasphemous, immoral, obscene, subversive or seditious. Books have been reduced to ashes in church yards, college yards, school furnaces, public squares and city streets. The goals of the book burners have been to extirpate history, to intimidate and stamp out opposition, to create solidarity, and to cleanse society of controversial ideas. Too often, book burning foreshadows violence against those who originated or shared the ideas.This work provides a detailed account of actual book burning worldwide over the past 2000 years. The book burners are identified, along with the works they set aflame. The study examines the metaphoric language that "justified" the destruction; characterizing the books as "tares," "pestilence," "plagues," "cancers," and "poison" is central to the control the burners hope to exercise. Also considered is the primeval pull of the book burning ritual, which in its simplicity leads to the destruction of ideas and the uniformity of thought associated with totalitarianism.

Maria's

George Allen was a top-ranked NFL coach throughout the sixties and seventies, coaching in turn the Chicago Bears, the Los Angeles Rams, and the Washington Redskins. Raised in a home dominated by her three football-obsessed older brothers and her father's relentless schedule, Jennifer Allen came of age in a cauldron of testosterone and win-at-all-costs mentality. Buffeted by the coach's tumultuous firings and hirings, the Allen family was periodically propelled to new teams in new cities. And while her French-Tunisian mother attempted to teach Jennifer proper feminine etiquette, the author dreamed of being the first female quarterback in the NFL. But as she grew up, she yearned mostly to be someone her father would notice. In a macho world where only foot-ball mattered, what could she strive for? Who could she become? Allen has written a poignant memoir of the father she tried so hard to know, about a family life that was willfully sacrificed to his endless fanatical pursuit of the Super Bowl. What emerges is a fascinating and singular behind-the-scenes look at professional football, and a memorable, bittersweet portrait of a father and his daughter, written in a fresh and perceptive voice.

The Scrimmage of a Football Coach's Daughter

Fifth Quarter

Samantha Chase

Stephanie Rose

Shari Ryan

Misha Elliott

Ashlee Taylor

Elizabeth Hayes

Janine Bosco

Madison Street

C. S. Patra

Savanna Grey

Eleven newly written stories by Authors in the City authors. This anthology will benefit Caring Community Foundation, located in Raleigh, NC where the 2017 Authors in the City book signing will be held. Authors in the City is hosted by: Stephanie's Book ReportsChristmas Once Again - Samantha ChaseLike Christmas - Ashlee TaylorUgly sweater - Elizabeth HayesA change of heart - Shari J. RyanChristmas break - Misha ElliottJoyful Temptations - Janine Infante BoscoDancing Snowflakes - Madison StreetThe Lovers of Vale - CS PatraChristmas Interference - Jennifer L. AllenRewrite - Stephanie RoseAll I Want for Christmas - Savanna Grey

Jennifer Allen

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