The Adolescent Literacy Project (ALP) provides high caliber, intensive literacy professional development for middle and high school educators and administrators in any content area. ALP is a yearlong course led by university faculty from Kentucky’s state universities designed to improve teachers’ literacy instruction on behalf of improved student outcomes. ALP offers professional books, resources, stipends/graduate credit, and secondary literacy education improvement plan guidance to schools. ALP costs nothing for schools to participate.
The site-specific cohorts allow each university to address the specific needs of its service region with the resources and expertise it has available to advance the Kentucky Academic Standards (KAS) on behalf of College and Career Readiness.
ALP begins with a summer institute where literacy strategies applicable for all content areas are modeled and practiced. Each participating educator begins the development of a literacy action plan during the summer institute. ALP is sustained throughout the year by collaboration with the university facilitator as teachers implement their literacy action plan. This can include coaching visits, co-teaching with faculty, or follow-up professional development days. Teacher participants end with a professional presentation at a statewide Share Fair.
Impact
Since its inception, ALP has had over 550 participants from over 157 schools from 66 districts across the state of Kentucky.
“Most PD’s I go to, although they talk about activities that you can do, they don’t really relate it to how you can implement them in your classroom. Every strategy or activity we learned in this PD I could easily modify and bring back to my classroom and my colleagues to help them help their students understand their content.”
“This PD was much more thought provoking and it challenged me and my processes in my classroom and I would actually leave every day taking something with me. I can leave (this PD) and automatically implement (strategies) in my classroom that I know would make an impact on the students as well as school wide. We’ve worked a lot on how we’re going to take this back to our school.”
“I now have a community of teachers that I can email or call (that I) feel comfortable with. Most PD’s you go to are three days long and you kind of get to know the other teachers but not to the level where I’d feel comfortable saying ‘I’m having some difficulties in this area, I need some help’. Because this was two weeks I feel like I could easily call on any of the teachers or professors that were here teaching us.”
University Sites
| Eastern Kentucky University Dorie Combs dorie.combs@eku.edu |
Kentucky State University Saleema Mustafa saleema.mustafa@kysu.edu |
| Morehead State University Alison Hruby a.hruby@moreheadstate.edu |
Murray State University Deborah Bell dbell@murraystate.edu |
| Northern Kentucky University Tammie Sherry & Mike DiCicco sherryt1@nku.edu diciccom1@nku.edu |
University of Louisville Penny Howell & Jean Wolph penny.howell@louisville.edu jean.wolph@louisville.edu |
| Western Kentucky University Kandy Smith kandy.smith@wku.edu |
Share Fair
The Collaborative Center for Literacy Development (CCLD) Share Fair is the culminating celebration and showcase of the yearlong work done through the Kentucky Reading Project (KRP) and Adolescent Literacy Project (ALP). Held on a Saturday each spring, the Share Fair consists of a series of roundtable sessions where KRP and ALP teachers discuss their literacy action plans they have been implementing all year. In addition to presenting their own work, the participants have numerous opportunities to network and attend other sessions with teachers from around the state. The day includes a luncheon with a keynote by a national literacy professional.
Share Fair 2018
The CCLD Share Fair took place on Saturday, April 21, 2018 in Louisville. 213 teachers from across the state who participated in KRP and ALP presented roundtable sessions about the focus of the Literacy Action Plans they developed and implemented in their classrooms. This year they were joined by 252 Read to Achieve +1 teachers who participated in KRP4RTA literacy training as a requirement of the RTA grant their schools received. The guest speaker at the Share Fair luncheon was Laura Robb, nationally renowned author, teacher, coach, and speaker.
