CANCELLED: UMaine UTC to host 5th annual Suzanne W. Cole Reading Recovery and Early Literacy Institute
NOTE (March 20, 2020): Due to ongoing concerns about the coronavirus, the 5th annual Suzanne W. Cole Reading Recovery and Early Literacy Institute has been cancelled. The University Training Center for Reading Recovery and Maine Partnerships in Comprehensive Literacy plan to hold the next conference in May 2021. For more information: Kathie Wing, katherine.wing@maine.edu.
The 5th annual Suzanne W. Cole Reading Recovery and Early Literacy Institute, hosted by the University Training Center for Reading Recovery and Maine Partnerships in Comprehensive Literacy, will be held Thursday May 21 at the Hutchinson Center in Belfast.
In previous years, the event has attracted more than 100 Reading Recovery teachers, literacy coaches and other professionals from across Maine.
The university center provides professional development to teacher leaders, who train Reading Recovery teachers in nearly 60 school districts statewide. The program helps students in first grade who struggle with reading and writing, by offering 12 to 20 weeks of individualized instruction. Over more than two decades, Reading Recovery has served more than 100,000 Maine children, helping them improve their literacy skills.
This year’s conference, which runs 8 a.m.–3:30 p.m., will feature a keynote address by K. Journey Swafford, Reading Recovery trainer a Georgia State University. Swafford is also associate project director for the Paths to Literacy Initiatives at Georgia State’s Department of Early Childhood and Elementary Education. Her areas of interest include teacher professional development, literacy coaching, reading intervention and social emotional learning. Her talk, “Making the Most of Coaching Conversations in Reading Recovery,” will ask participants to consider settings within Reading Recovery for collaboration and coaching conversations, the language of coaching interactions and how to make the most of coaching opportunities.
The Suzanne W. Cole Reading Recovery and Early Literacy Institute is named for Suzanne Cole, matriarch of the Cole family of Bangor. For more than 20 years, the Galen Cole Family Foundation has provided financial support to school districts in Maine that offer Reading Recovery, and the conference is held in recognition of their extraordinary contribution to teacher education and the literacy success of young children in Maine.
In addition to the keynote, the conference will include several morning and afternoon sessions.