If you’ve been following education news, you know students’ reading and writing skills remain low, especially after the pandemic, with no state having made gains since 2022, demonstrating the importance of effectively teaching literacy. School districts need to do more to ensure every student enters adulthood fully literate. One step is to train all educators — not just those in elementary and English classes — to be reading teachers.

Many states, including Maryland, where I live and work as a literacy coach, are embracing the science of reading, which uses brain science to teach children how to read. However, these efforts to teach literacy are focused at the elementary level, and older students are going through high school without the benefit of these best practices.

My district, Baltimore City Public Schools, is working to address that problem. For the last four years, I have helped all teachers at Reginald F. Lewis High School weave reading and writing into their lessons. This is unusual, because while the district has had literacy coaches in elementary and secondary schools, most work only with English Language Arts teachers. This isn’t enough.

Consider this: During a team meeting, teachers and I reviewed Maryland’s state English test and found it had just one set of questions related to a literature passage. The rest were based on informational texts, such as historical primary source documents, scientific reports and graphs. Subject-matter teachers are best-suited to help students learn to read and analyze these passages.

While all the teachers I work with know that students are coming to them with large literacy gaps, most weren’t accustomed to working with a coach, especially a literacy coach. They were skeptical at first. Overcoming that required taking key steps.

First, my principal had to make it clear that literacy learning was a schoolwide responsibility and that I was there to help. Then, I had to build strong relationships with teachers. I did that by listening, learning about the challenges they faced, observing instruction and providing feedback, and being a consistent and supportive presence in their classrooms. We studied data and set goals together.

Read the full article about teaching literacy by Bobbi F. O’Brien at The 74.