ABSTRACT
Teachers are some of the most challenging people to work with. We work in an environment that is unique and where no one knows what it is like to be a teacher unless they are one. Today public schools are under a lot of pressure to achieve high test scores and therefore many schools have hired literacy coaches to help support teachers with their instruction. I am one of those people. I have been a literacy coach for almost two years and at the beginning of this school year I asked myself several questions: What makes an effective literacy coach? How can teachers warm to the idea of having someone analyze and discuss their instruction? What do I know that others do not know? I then thought about the role of a coach and how he or she could help teachers improve their instruction. Is the model of planning, observing, follow-up, and implementation beneficial to instructional improvement? Would teachers begin to trust me more if they saw me as a peer rather than as an authority? How could I change the role of the literacy coach to peer collaborator?
