Language & Literacy Program: Curriculum

In the language and literacy program. We often say that a focus on language and literacy is a focus on leadership. Why do we say that will schools and districts are often judged by literacy scores?

You know that literacy is the foundation of all learning and you also know that students who can read confidently comprehend fully and write clearly open doors to worlds of discovery and science, math, literature in history. You also know that adults who struggled to read and write are locked out of better paying jobs and hindered in their own personal development.

So this is the place to talk about these hurdles and to troubleshoot. These hurdles our curriculum is divided into 3 different strands of focus. We have the generalist strand the reading specialist strand and the literacy coach strand.

Now the general is strand offers the most flexibility, allowing students to choose courses in research policy and practice that best match their interests and career goals students in the generalists. Tran may have a field that they're already focused on one of our students had an organization that she already developed in South Africa.

And she came to get more information on language development, and interventions for students struggling in literacy skills in her country so this is a good strand to support your personalized interest in language and literacy and the interests vary across the spectrum. But general students are basically required to take 16 credits from the language and literacy core courses.

And then they're taking 16 elective credits so you can take those courses at Harvard Graduate School of Education, or another Harvard or MIT. MGH school through cross registration.

The Reading Specialist Strand is a more structured strand designed to satisfy the requirements of licensure as a reading specialist teacher in Massachusetts. In addition to coursework in reading development and reading difficulties students complete a field work practicum in an urban public school admission to the reading specialist rain requires an active initial or professional teaching license and a minimum of one full year of teaching experience so often students in the reading specialist strand are.

Teachers or students who have had experience in the classroom and have a lens into how literacy is already functioning in those classrooms and they come to either build their skills and to become either reading specialist. Maybe they want to return back to the classroom. But the Sky is also the limit for reading specialist as they enter many fields of leadership within school. Contexts or even outside of school context within districts. So the possibilities are also endless for the reading specialist students.

The literacy coaching strand is for students who are interested in providing professional development and literacy training to teachers as a school based literacy coach. In addition to taking courses an adult and professional development, students have the opportunity to observe literacy coaches working in local schools.

Admission to literacy coach strand is reserved for applicants with at least 3 years of teaching experience so often. Students who come into the literacy coaching strand have had some years of experience, possibly 3 or more looking at what it's like to teach looking at the struggles that professionals have faced with in those settings and they actually want to become leaders in terms of helping other teachers and helping the profession and prove.

So that's a great strand of process possibilities and all of these strands really feed into the leadership that is within you.

You should join us.