Lead with Literature:

Love books?

I'm sharing my favorite picture books PERFECT to spark conversation, collaboration and learning in instructional coaching and leading. 

Need inspiration?

Launching challenging complex conversations might push teacher learning forward, but it can be challenging work. Let picture books start the conversations instead!

Want Ideas?

I'll give you the backstory on how and why picture books are perfect tools for coaching and bring the best selections to you!

I'm Stephanie!

I have a love for all things literacy teaching, coaching and leading. I’ve dedicated my career to creating spaces for learning that build teacher expertise, spark intentional reflection and connect philosophy to pedagogy. 

I’ve carved out a little corner of the virtual world just for instructional coaches and leaders to fuel their work and receive the same level of support and energy they provide for their teachers.

My professional passion? I've fused my love of notebooks, markers and sticky notes with digital tools and technology to innovate instructional coaching and lifelong teacher reading, writing and learning. 

Why harness the power of picture books in coaching and leading?

I have always been a voracious reader. Books were my friends in childhood, my therapists in my teenage and young adult years and some of my best parenting tools. So it made sense to bring them into my teaching, coaching and leading, too. 

Many educators use picture books to build a classroom community around shared texts and offer students mentor texts for their own writing. But what if we brought picture books into coaching and leading so teachers could experience the same?

Harnessing the power of picture books in coaching and leading offers tremendous benefits:

• Creates a shared culture of reading with teachers.
• Offers teachers new titles to consider for their own classroom. 
• Models powerful read aloud practices for the classroom. 
• Offers a launching point for complex conversations. 
• Sparks coaching conversations, collaborative inquiry and even coaching cycles. 

But above all, reading picture books reminds teachers the power it holds so they can bring that same power to their students. 

So, what's included?

The Lead with Literature workshop consists of:

1. The backstory on why and how we can harness the power of picture books in instructional coaching and leading. 

2. Three ways to bring picture books into your coaching TODAY.

3. Printable coaching points for each book included, including a book summary, discussion prompts for before and after reading and ideas for follow-up coaching. 

You'll get energized, inspired and full of book love to spark your coaching!

Here's what you can accomplish with the picture books and discussion guides included in Lead with Literature:

• Explore the coaching role in your school
• Help teachers see new perspectives and gain multiple viewpoints
• Start a new initiative with the right mindset
• Question instructional practices in a safe space
• Check assumptions, rewrite stories and think forward for change
• Boost teacher morale
• Build teacher learning communities and foster genuine connections
• Promote a growth mindset for teachers and their students
• Refine instructional practices
• Spark creativity
• Explore the systems at place within the school
• Set professional goals as individuals and teams
• Proactively take steps to get 'unstuck' as a learning community
• Examine philosophies of teaching and learning
• Foster rich home-school-community connections
• Explore what engaged and meaningful learning looks like for students
• Introduce new teams of teachers and welcome teachers to a new year
• Promote inquiry, interest and imagination in learning
• Explore our own roles as learners as how that impacts our teaching
• Reflect on how we spend out instructional time
• What self-care for educators looks like
• Develop shared understandings of teaching
• Examine student data with an objective and proactive lens
• Make instructional decisions with clarify and heart
• Experience the power of strong reading and writing communities 
• Launch positive conversations on challenging instructional topics
• How to take instructional risks to benefit students
• Explore how to boost social-emotional learning in our schools
• Uncover our purpose as educators
• Spark gratitude and a culture of thankfulness
• Reflect on students' hidden lives, needs and untold stories
• Uncover students' gifts to the world and support them accordingly
• Articulate and cultivate our professional learning networks

Wondering what the book printable looks like?

Here's a downloadable sample using Little Brown by Marla Frazee!

And the best part? You'll get any new books I add to the workshop FOREVER! There are 50 books now and who knows how many later! Just click below to purchase!