Outside the Lines by Terry Janes

A little over a year ago, I accepted a position as a reading specialist having finished up a four year stint as a fourth grade teacher. During year 18 of my teaching career, my primary task was "to equip  teachers with knowledge and skills necessary to help third grade students achieve grade-level reading or above." This task also came with various other caveats like requiring that I spend 80% of my time in third grade and that third graders' state reading assessment scores increase by at least 10% in one year. Long story short...the educators with whom I worked and I achieved what we had been tasked to do, by the state's standards. (More important than those standards, I witnessed first hand how knowledge and literacy can and does change the course for a grade level and a group of hard-working teachers and third graders.) Day in and day out, I analyzed data, conducted intervention, coached teachers, modeled interactive lessons and guided reading groups, gathered re