Literacy Coach

Think of a Literacy Coach the way you would any other Coach, just with lots of books and none of the celebratory Gatorade baths. Like any other Coach, a Literary Coach will train, lead, and encourage the people they work with. You help reading, writing, and English Teachers implement new teaching methods in order to improve their students’ abilities.

As a Literacy Coach, you can work for a number of different organizations, but the primary employers for this job are schools. Kindergarten all the way through high schools hire for this position, as do nonprofits that teach literacy to non-English speakers and other adult learners. No matter the age of the students you’re helping though, you ultimately work with their Teachers. You might come into a classroom with a specific technique you want to implement, or you might rely more on observation of individual students and Teachers. You also use research and data to help Teachers come up with new ways of approaching reading, and then coach them through different activities and resources that they can use with their students.

You spend most of your time in the classroom, observing students and Teachers, and keeping detailed records of their progress. The rest of your day is spent meeting with individual Teachers to give advice and information on how they can improve, and then researching new methods of learning. You serve as a specialized expert in improving literacy, and so you focus your time on studying the best ways to get across to different student groups.