DEED Spotlight on Rhonda Harvey, Fairbanks Literacy Coach

Rhonda Harvey is the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District’s stellar Secondary Literacy Grant Coach. After working with students as an English Language Arts (ELA) teacher and as a district building coach, Ms. Harvey jumped at the opportunity to support every 7th-12th grade teacher at the ten secondary schools in the district. Helping teachers across all content areas is the driving mission, as supporting literacy is essential for student growth and learning in all subject areas. Therefore, teachers should feel capable and confident in teaching students with evidence-based literacy strategies no matter the subject area.

Ms. Harvey's first year in the position has been very different from the original vision. Rather than returning to in-person learning in the fall, the school board voted to continue remote-learning for the first semester of the school year. The decision for online learning meant developing resources to support teachers to improve the virtual learning experiences offered to students. Ms. Harvey has met with PLCs and other school groups virtually to promote the program and the vision of content-wide literacy practices at the secondary level. Ms. Harvey has also worked with individual teachers to adjust in-person practice to become more effective in the virtual learning environment. Investing in relationships and taking the time to build resources for both virtual and physical learning spaces, Ms. Harvey has quickly become an asset for many teachers in the district. 

In late January, Fairbanks North Star Borough School District began bringing students back together in person. The decision to return to in-person learning was met with much joy and some trepidation. However, Ms. Harvey has started to visit different classrooms across the district to support teachers as educators learn how to teach students attending school remotely while also working with students in person.

Ms. Harvey has created an interactive literacy notebook for teachers at Fairbanks North Star Borough School District. The interactive Google slides notebook was designed for all secondary teachers. Each section contains strategies to use in all classrooms and students while providing extra support to struggling readers. Throughout the document, there are links to handouts and tabs on each heading to transition quickly through sections. The notebook is organized based on the four quadrants of successful/struggling readers and the formula: Reading Comprehension = Linguistic Comprehension + Word Recognition. The notebook dives into three categories of struggling readers & six clusters of characterizations. The purpose of the interactive notebook is to give secondary teachers quick access to reliable resources and strategies to help struggling readers.

Ms. Harvey is looking forward to hosting a camp for teachers over the summer, which will provide opportunities to try strategies and practice different ways to support students in developing literacy skills. The educators involved will teach literacy strategies and interventions during an educational camp for secondary students. The learning experience will allow teachers to immediately practice skills with students, and obtain feedback from colleagues on best practices.