schools to “facilitate high quality profes-
sional learning opportunities for educators
to ensure that every student has access to
teachers who are prepared to teach to the
levels of rigor and depth required by the
CCSS” (CDE, 2014, p. 6). The plan also
indicates that leaders should be prepared to
respond to two specific challenges. The first
is regarding the high level of technological
proficiency needed by teachers and school
leaders to effectively address more than 100
direct mentions of the use of technology in
the CCSS ELA (United States Department
of Education, 2016). The second relates to
the administration of new computer-based
standardized assessments created to mea-
sure student achievement of the CCSS
ELA. Therefore, professional learning ef-
forts would need to focus upon these areas
– for teachers of all subject areas. During my
interviews with administrators, a Director
of Curriculum and Instruction for a school
district in Southern California specifically
addressed this need:
What does Common Core mean? It's my
belief, as a curriculum director, that it's very
much— I think this is consistent with the
Common Core, this isn't an ELA initia-
tive. This is literacy and science, literacy and
technical subjects, literacy and history. And
our science teachers, our history teachers,
our technical subject teachers, they weren't
necessarily adequately prepared for that type
of paradigm shift.
All administrators with whom I spoke
were unanimous in affirming that serving
as an instructional leader is a priority for
them. However, they also shared that com-
peting responsibilities prevent them from
being able to fulfill that role to the degree
that is needed or that they would like. Con-
sequently, they’ve found a need to distrib-
ute instructional leadership tasks to other
site leaders who have the time and ability
to provide continuous, embedded, one-on-
one professional development within the
context of daily ELA instructional practice
(Darling-Hammond, Hyler, & Gardner,
2017; Darling-Hammond, Wei, Andree,
Richardson, & Orphanos, 2009; Neumer-
ski, 2013).
Though many school districts commonly
select to employ instructional coaches to
provide embedded professional develop-
ment to their teachers, one school district in
Central California has intentionally selected
a different population of teacher leaders -
teacher librarians - to help provide this type
of support in addressing CCSS student lit-
eracy needs. The district’s Assistant Super-
intendent of Educational Services disclosed
the reasoning for this during my interview
with her.
We selected teacher librarians for a couple
of reasons. One, we have a history of valu-
ing that role. That role as a trained role, not
simply a classroom teacher who is a literacy
teacher and passionate about reading and a
lot of books, but somebody really who has
the training and certification that comes
with it. That's our history. We know that
previously they made a difference for every
stakeholder group that you can imagine…
that there's that role that is there to manage
the library on the day-to-day management
level, but then to oversee those management
operations and then to be able to provide in-
structional support is above and beyond…
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