Restart Recharge Podcast

506 Inside Elementary Literacy Coaching - Part 1

• Forward Edge • Season 5 • Episode 6

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Join Katie Ritter and Matthaeus Huelse as they turn their focus to elementary literacy coaching and welcome Jaclynn Krella, a seasoned educator with a Master's in Education and a structured literacy dyslexia specialist certification. Jaclynn shares her extensive experience as a classroom teacher, reading interventionist, and literacy coach supporting over 100 teachers. Dive into how she collaborates with teachers, sets student-centered goals, utilizes technology for observation, and analyzes impactful student data to enhance instructional practices. Whether you're a tech coach, literacy coach, or an education enthusiast, this episode offers valuable insights and practical approaches to effective coaching.


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Podcast Team
Hosts - Katie Ritter & Matthäus Huelse
Producer - Celine Thomas, Matthäus Huelse
Editing Team - Ben Glasure, Matthäus Huelse
Social Media Team - Grace Brown

Matthaeus Huelse:

Calling all Instructional Coaches, Curriculum Specialists, Teachers on Special Assignment, or whatever they call you. I'm Matthaeus Huelse.

Katie Ritter:

And I'm Katie Ritter. As Instructional Coaches, are often responsible for our own professional learning and can sometimes feel pretty isolated in our role.

Matthaeus Huelse:

That's why we're here, bridging the gap with a wealth of tips, tricks, and building a community of coaches.

Katie Ritter:

So hit the restart button with us.

Matthaeus Huelse:

Recharge your coaching batteries.

Katie Ritter:

And hopefully you'll leave feeling just a little bit less on your own coaching island.

Matthaeus Huelse:

Welcome back coaches to another episode of Restart, recharge. Designed to sharpen your skills and elevate your impact. Ready to go with another episode. We know there are many kinds of coaches out there, from literacy to math coaches and here at Forward Edge. Many of us are tech coaches. Let's connect our coaching islands of expertise and zoom in on one kind of coach, specifically the elementary literacy coach. So we're thrilled to welcome Jaclynn Krella. Jaclynn brings a wealth of Experience to the table holding a Master's of Education and reading and a prestigious structured literacy, dyslexia specialist certification. I got through that in one go.

Katie Ritter:

I'm impressed,

Matthaeus Huelse:

that's good. From the International Dyslexia Association, she's walked the walk in education, working as a classroom teacher, reading interventionist and literacy coach. She supports over 100 teachers in her district, guiding them in best practices for reading and writing, serving as their K-6 literacy coach. As a level four IMSE OG master instructor, she's not just coaching teachers in her district, but training educators nationwide and IMSE's, Orton-Gillingham methodology. When she's not empowering teachers, she's enjoying time with her husband and for children. Jaclynn, welcome to the show.

Katie Ritter:

Welcome.

Jacklyn Krella:

Thanks for having me.

Katie Ritter:

We are super excited to have you. here today.

Matthaeus Huelse:

Yeah, and I need to confirm the IMSE OG master. I'm assuming OG is Orton-Gillingham, but I like the idea of it being original gangster more.

Jacklyn Krella:

Yes, I do too. It's not that, although I'll let you continue to think that.

Matthaeus Huelse:

Good.

Katie Ritter:

The OG literacy coach. Jaclynn, we're excited to have a different coaching perspective on the pod. Matthaeus and I bring and any of the coaches at Forward Edge, like Matthaeus said in the introduction is, from the tech coach lens. So we dip our toes in a lot of area, but everything we're doing is really kind of with that lens of, how are we closing digital equity gaps? Right? To, to support instruction on a broad scale. So, could you, and a lot of our listeners are also technology. coaches, but we do have all sorts of, coach listeners. so, for those folks who are not a literacy coach that are listening, would you describe a, a, what's a typical workday for a literacy coach? Right? How, do, how are you collaborating with teachers, to enhance their. Instructional practices in, literacy?

Jacklyn Krella:

That's a really good question. Like a tech coach, my day looks different. Every day. So I would frame it as like, what does my week look like? I do a lot of collaborating with teachers like our tech coaches. We'll do unit and lesson plans. Some formal and informal coaching cycles, some mini type coaching cycles., honestly, like if I'm doing my job right I'm most comfortable sitting on a desk in a classroom talking to a teacher and connecting with them, asking them questions, giving advice when asked, that's really my most comfortable. Time of the day., but I also work with organizing data and meeting with teachers and admin about the data and the takeaways that we, we can take from that. And even working through, okay, now what kinds of interventions can we implement?, what kinds of technology can we implement in order , to support students as well? And then, I also do. As you mentioned, Orton-Gillingham training. And so one day a week that's, that's a five day, five day training that I do. So I do that with teachers in our district and also those outside our district. We'll come in and do that in person. So just, I mean, all sorts of things. My day is just full of everything, but I love it that way. That is. My most comfortable mode is on the fly, walking through hallways, answering questions, and digging deep into, into lit all things literacy.

Katie Ritter:

I love that. Sounds very familiar. from a past life for me now, but very familiar. I'm curious though, you mentioned, coaching cycles and mini coaching cycles. What do those look like for you? Every, ev there's so many different models and approaches. So I'd love to. hear. from someone outside our team, what does your approach to coaching cycles look like?

Jacklyn Krella:

As Matthaeus mentioned, I do support over a hundred teachers. So like it is a very. Very broad range of how this, what this looks like. A mini type coaching cycle is super informal. Maybe, you know, a teacher's asked me about something. We get together, we collaborate, maybe we co-teach a little bit together the next time around, do a little reflection. And it's usually something that's tidy and small that we can, that we work through, a more formalized, longer coaching cycle, more traditional type coaching cycle. Would involve me coming in us. Talking about goals, talking about, a specific area that a teacher wants to focus on, looking at the data, determining like what's best for that piece. And then it would be probably more of at first me observing. And I like to use technology for that. We have swivel cameras in the district. And so I prefer actually to stay out of the classroom when observe. I like, I like to be there when it's informal. I like to be there. I like to be there all the time, actually. But I think that particularly when we're talking about young children like kindergartners and first graders, me being in the classroom, it's like, are you a sub? Are you. Are you my mom? Like, whose mom are you? And it's just become such, become such a distraction it's easier to set up a swivel camera in the back for us to record the lesson. It gives the teacher a chance to watch it on their own time. Before we meet to reflect. And then it also gives us a chance, like we're both looking at the same thing. It's not me coming in saying I noticed this, or What did you think about, we're both looking at the same video and also, I mean, very rare do teachers get that view of their entire class with. Themselves removed from all of the thinking that comes with teaching, right? So then they get to actually see the whole picture as well. So I really like to do that. That's actually my preferred way

Katie Ritter:

I think that is brilliant. I feel like so often, I've always thought. To try to be in the classroom live just 'cause it gets you in there. It's another way to make that connection point with that teacher. But I think the way you're describing using the video for the actual observation piece, and I love how you sit down with the teacher to watch it too. right? I think wow. What a powerful, a powerful collaborative moment. Between the coach and the teacher, to be looking at the exact same thing. That is brilliant. I love that.

Jacklyn Krella:

It's so helpful. And also I, I have just finished, up, like in order to become a trainer for Orton-Gillingham through IMSE or the MZ is what they sometimes call themselves, I had to do a lot of recording of myself. Tons of recording of myself teaching lessons, , doing the training as well, just like hundreds of hours of recording and watching myself, and it's, it's really painful. I, don't love it, but I learned so much about myself as a teacher going through my practicum that way, and video it. I'm recording myself. And I learned so much about myself as a trainer too. Training adults. I just always recommend it. I know, I know people don't love to do it, but I think that it's so, so powerful.

Katie Ritter:

Yeah. Well what is so ironic is we've been talking internally mm-hmm. a lot about, you know, we, are, we want to give each other, feedback on coaching and their presentation skills. We want it to be really authentic, but it's also really hard to be there in the moment. When they're. Doing the PD day, right? because Everybody's out leading PD on those days or to interrupt a coaching conversation could be really awkward to like sit and and listen to that to be able to give like authentic feedback. So, um, we actually just bought a camera so we could start doing more videoing. I don't wanna totally derail this podcast, but I just have so many questions I think it's awesome and like perfect timing for you to have brought that up. and, And. planted that little seed of some additional ways, that we can use video reflection, not only for ourselves, but with our teachers too.

Matthaeus Huelse:

Yeah. I wrote down the question, how, how many people were excited to actually record themselves and then watch it, because, people are not excited to Do that.

Katie Ritter:

Someone who's also very timely been making videos of myself this week to post. and wanting to die at every turn.

Matthaeus Huelse:

Yeah.

Jacklyn Krella:

In college, I actually had to record, like audio record myself and then write a transcript of it. And I think that is only the, I mean, I think watching myself on video is only second most painful to that. Like actually writing a transcript with every, um, every repeat of a phrase, every, all the things. That was probably the hardest. That's probably the hardest. But doing a video, I, it's, I know, and at first it is, it is really challenging, but then we all just. Move on. And, , and I think the teachers actually see value in it, and it only serves to help them, right? Like everything that we're doing is, is, is not going to hurt them in any way. It's all to, to help and support them. they also know that I'm non-evaluative, I am just, I'm here to, to help and I'm not here to critique or, jot down all of the things. You're going to be harder on yourself than I'm going to be like in our conversation. A lot of the conversations that follow in those coaching cycles are me asking questions and them reflecting. And so that's, I think once we get through one of those, it's, it's very simple and, and people are more, much more relaxed.

Katie Ritter:

Can you give some examples of maybe some of the, mini goals that you are setting with teachers in the context of really either the mini coaching cycles or the larger coaching cycles? Like what is, what is the type of a goal that a teacher is setting when they're working with you?

Jacklyn Krella:

I mean, I work K through six and so, um, some of, I mean, the goals range quite a bit right now. Um, for one teacher in particular, I'm actually working with quite a few sixth grade teachers right now, so one goal was. For her students to become more proficient on the argumentative writing piece of, of the standards. Right. And so, and, and that's a little bit harder to, to measure, that the writing output there. But, one of her goals was to improve that piece. And to improve their scores on the OST come this spring. We looked at last year's data. We, made, you know, put together that goal and then we did a more like a coaching cycle. Surrounding that and, and put all the pieces together, lesson planned together, reflected, came back again, co-taught for a while. I think we both learned so much from that. There were, I mean, another technology piece we used was, um, at the beginning of that unit, they started using, oh, I'm gonna forget the name of it. It's like a quick write type of, program that the students were using and they could anonymously. And then once everyone wrote for five minutes in an argumentative writing piece and they had a little bit of time to prep and get their things together, then they wrote, and then they were able to, share their responses with the class anonymously. And then they kind of evaluate each other's and it becomes almost like a, bracket of sorts. And then there's like one final, they keep evaluating until they get to one final, person and it's all anonymous and it's just a fun way to get students writing as soon as they came into the classroom. So we did use that piece, I have another teacher, in an elementary setting her goal is to, improve her students' MAP scores during intervention time, so we have worked together on some specific lessons for that time as well. Um, just all, all sorts. There's another reading intervention teacher that we're working together and, she has goals of improving morphology teaching and, and hers are a little bit less because of the data piece there, but it is to improve her, like progress monitoring scores so, all over the board.

Katie Ritter:

well, I, What I'm hearing a, a theme and these goals are very student centered, I'm wondering if you have any perspective on maybe working with teachers to set teacher focused goals versus student focused outcome goals and how that has impacted some of your work.

Jacklyn Krella:

So usually coming in that we do try to stay super student centered because that's how I know we're doing well, whether or not our students are growing and becoming better readers and writers. Sometimes I'll come in and the teacher will say like, I'm really struggling with this engagement piece for,, this, um, we implemented a new foundational skills. Structure last year. And so we had some engagement issues, especially this time of year. Our kids had been at it for a while and teachers like, we really, like, I'm really looking for some engagement ideas. And so, you know, I watched and, um, and so we helped, them to implement some of those as well. We had, it's a, like, we would have like a, a hero of the day, like the kid, who stayed focused and participated the most. And that's something that's carried on into a lot of the classrooms this year. That engagement piece does come into play a lot. We're shifting a lot because of the science of reading right now. And so A lot of the shifting is a little bit more teacher directed than it has been in the past. That I is okay and good and, and natural , and because of that structured literacy model that we're taking on, the teachers feel like they're working toward improving engagement while keeping that teacher led piece in place because the students are so used to having autonomy and being able to choose, or having, something in their hands where it's, it's constantly switching and changing gears. But here we are, we're reading this story and it's, we're gonna be doing it for the next 10 minutes, you know, kind of thing. And staying focused. So a lot of my teacher goals lately have been, engagement, but I think that it has helped us to think creatively inside of that structure, like choral responses and, students writing on whiteboards and things like that in order to keep them actively involved in the lesson.

Matthaeus Huelse:

So you already, we, we, sort of almost touched on that because it does seem like you are surrounded by. all Of these opportunities to either collect data or, work with data. Right? Because the data meetings themselves between that and coaching cycles. And then observations, so there's lots of stuff that I'm sure you're collecting along the way. When when it gets to the point when you have to show like, okay, here's the impact I'm having. What are the key metrics that you are looking at? Especially since it's so weird 'cause some of it is structured to student data. And Some of it might be like coaching data. So. where do you focus,

Jacklyn Krella:

Key metrics for me will always be student data because that, that's why I'm here. I, we're always looking our students making growth, whether it be on diagnostics or our screening assessments year to year, whether it's on OST or the Ohio State test data., we're always looking to see in general, are our students making growth? Are they able to read and understand what they're reading? That's the bottom line. And actually , to me, the numbers are important, but it's really are our students able to read and write and understand what they're reading and writing. And so if, if we are making growth in that area and we have to use those numbers in order to, to show that and help us to see that, then that's really like, I've done my job. When it comes to coaching and sharing that data with those that. well One, I am always talking to administrators about the student data too. But how do I talk like through my coaching data? How do I report that out? So much of it is actually yesterday we had a coaching meeting, with the director of instruction , and we work very closely together., but I just, it's almost more like analytical, like I literally just type up all of the things I've been doing and I'm working on, and the teachers that I helped and the amount of people that I've trained and, and PD. Feedback forms, and feedback forms from my Orton-Gillingham training, I get all sorts of feedback forms from that too. and I am looking for, I do, I'm always looking for how can I become better at this? So I do often ask for, you know, after pd, like, how, you know, like, I wanna know what, is this helpful? What is it not? Like, I don't wanna waste our time if this is not going to be helpful for you and have an impact for you in your students in your classroom. I don't wanna do it. I wanna do it in a different way or in a way that makes most sense for that, to happen. Some of it's , just like a dialogue between, the director of instruction and I, and sometimes it is. The comments and feedback from our teachers

Katie Ritter:

I'm curious because I think whenever I'm talking to content coaches, they're always working a lot more with student data, with teachers, which makes sense, we're testing those content areas, the data's available. When I think about our, our tech. Coaches or even maybe like mTSS behavior coaches.

Matthaeus Huelse:

Mm-hmm.

Katie Ritter:

right? Like we're seeing more social emotional learning coaches. There's not a testing category on that. So I see that they don't work as much with student data. Sometimes there's maybe a sensitivity around, asking teachers to, to bring it to the table. What advice might you give, to some of our. non-con coach teachers who may not have access readily to content testing information, but who have the same intentions as you, like students are, why we're there? That's, That's ultimately what. we're trying to do, how, what advice might you give them about maybe how to build those relationships with teachers or maybe how to even approach a conversation to suggest that they look at student data together?

Jacklyn Krella:

Building relationships with teachers is, one of my favorite things about this job I get to know so many different teachers across the district. I also live in this district, so that makes it helpful. My kids have had some of these teachers, I've had a few. Building those relationships and just being present and being available and sometimes, early on, a lot of it was like, can I get you the thing that you need? It's a materials thing. Did you need a resource for vocabulary? I've got one for you., in building that type of relationship, I'm also very, um, efficient and. Cognizant of how I'm moving about the school during the day and where I am. I always know the schedule and it doesn't work out perfectly, but let's say I am looking to have deeper conversations with teachers or really get to know them or have a chance to really sit down and talk. I will chase the special schedule around our school. I will know whose planning period is what. And, and I work in four different schools. So I have the special schedule for each one. On a binder, I, can't even do it digitally. Like I have to have a paper copy and I just go around chasing, who's in their plan period. I just literally walk down their hallways and peek in their doors and say, how's it going? Some teachers will say, have a seat. Let's talk. And I love that. Early on it was just a lot of. Me asking, how was your weekend? Oh, did you do anything interesting? But then also it's the next time I'm around like, oh, how's the basketball team doing now that I know, there's sun's on about, You know what I mean? Like, and just building that rapport. And now everyone knows I'm safe And that I'm not out to get you. I then having those conversations of , anytime you have an opening, anytime anyone's asking a question, or seeking something like, oh, let's talk about that. Do you mind if we sit down and explore that together? Let's set up a time or, and then we get into data, right? Then we're able to ask for that data. Or look at the data that we do, that we do have, or get teacher feedback too during that time that that counts for a ton as well. So, so much of, of what I do is just getting input from the teachers it's like, how is this going? We're piloting a new ELA, core curriculum, So much of my day is just getting feedback, like honest feedback about how it's going.'cause they're not going to email me about it. Some will, some will, but others, they're just not going to. So it's just gonna take me showing up, during their planned time to chat. But there are other times when I'm walking around and maybe I'm looking to see is the pilot going well, right? Is our new ELA curriculum going well or in the case of tech coaches, is this technology being used well And so I will make sure, I know when everyone's ELA time is and I just chase that schedule around during the day and, and try to make sure that I'm being efficient with how I'm going around just so I can peek into classrooms and get, a view of how that's going on the fly.

Katie Ritter:

Yeah Yeah. Yeah.

Matthaeus Huelse:

we will take a really quick break for our sponsors and then we will be right back.

Lisa Kuhn-Oldeges (Coaches Camp Promo):

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Katie Ritter:

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Matthaeus Huelse:

That's going to wrap up part one of our conversation with Jacqueline. Carla, we hate to leave you hanging, but we couldn't let this episode go on without a breather from creative ways to use video recording for coaching observations to tips on how to get student data from your teachers. There's already been so much to take away. But we are just getting started in part two. We'll keep the conversation going and dive into teacher mindset shifts, district-wide literacy changes, and now Jacqueline builds trust with supporting over a hundred teachers. You are not gonna wanna miss it. So we'll see you again in two weeks. Thanks for spending time with us today. If you found this episode helpful, please share it with an educator friend.

Katie Ritter:

And connect with us on social media at rrcoachcast to let us know what you thought of the episode and what topics you want us to discuss next.

Matthaeus Huelse:

New episodes drop every other Tuesday. Be sure to subscribe to Restart Recharge wherever you listen to podcasts.

Katie Ritter:

So press the restart button,

Matthaeus Huelse:

recharge your coaching batteries, and leave feeling equipped and inspired to coach fearlessly with the Restart Recharge podcast,

Katie Ritter:

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People on this episode

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Dr. Katie Ritter

Co-host
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Matthäus Huelse

Co-host