I became an educator with the goal of sharing my passion for literature.
I have been an educator since 1998, beginning as a secondary English teacher in Brooklyn, New York. My early experiences connected me with Teachers College, which created a foundation of beliefs around learning. My wife, Kate, an ESOL certified literacy coach, and I left the city and continued our teaching careers at Orange-Ulster BOCES. I was privileged to work at a BOCES, as it provided me the opportunity to work with the 17 component districts.
This view offered an exposure to how students experience learning across the county. Additionally, BOCES trained me as a literacy facilitator in a program focused on Literacy Across Content Areas. As my career progressed, my connection to one of the component districts, Port Jervis, deepened.
Port Jervis is a unique small city, a caring and supportive community, situated between the Delaware and Neversink Rivers with beautiful mountain views. I acquired my administration certification in 2013 and in 2014 I became the Port Jervis Middle School assistant principal. In 2021, I was appointed principal of Port Jervis High School.
Following the pandemic was particularly challenging as it created social and academic deficits in students. Focusing our instruction and community around common goals was more important than ever. As the year progressed, we collected instructional and student data with the goal of identifying gaps and developing systems that would move our learning community forward. Literacy became the central driver and thus a mechanism to build our culture as it is fundamental to student success in all disciplines.
We started with a view of literacy that is intimately connected with our Multi-Tiered System of Support. For those unfamiliar with MTSS, it is a framework focused on supporting all students and meeting them at their level with researched based interventions. Tier 1 happens every day, for every student in every classroom. Through this system we are able to establish a common language along with common expectations, thereby developing a culture and community of learning. This culture is founded in literacy.
When we discuss literacy in our building, we think of it in terms of four modalities--reading, writing, listening, and speaking. These modalities are intimately connected to thinking, especially critical thinking. Additionally, these modalities open the door for engagement and collaboration. Our focus is less in terms of creating readers; rather, our focus is creating learners and thinkers who have the tools to critically challenge texts across the curriculum.
Culture starts with shared beliefs: It is our belief that critical literacy is the collective responsibility of all classroom teachers. As this effort was the expectation, our leadership team began to outline a methodology to support our teachers. Before this school year began, all of our teachers participated in professional development focused on Literacy Across the Curriculum. The district has recently hired literacy coaches, one of whom is assigned to our secondary schools. Our literacy coach meets with teachers individually to help support their literacy efforts, shares weekly tips, meets with departments to workshop methods of incorporating effective engagement based on the aforementioned modalities into every lesson, and works directly with students to support their literacy journeys.
As educational leaders, my assistant principals and I collect data around the observed methods of classroom engagement. We create quarterly reports that help drive our decision making in terms of professional development and next steps to help support this culture.
I became an educator with the goal of sharing my passion for literature. That view evolved into a belief that education can begin to level the playing field. Critical Literacy, and by extension, Critical Thinking is the foundation for authentic learning and human autonomy.
~ Anthony Lazzaro is the principal at Port Jervis High School in Port Jervis, New York.
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