Leadership in Teaching and Training | The Martin Family Initiative

The LITT program focuses on lending a helping hand to school community leaders as they pilot efforts in their schools and communities to establish, enrich, and expand literacy learning.

About the Program

While the Model Schools Literacy Program (MSLP) focuses on providing support for literacy enrichment that meets the schools’, instructors’, and students’ needs, the LITT program was created to support school leaders and their larger community efforts. LITT strives to not only meet school leaders where they are in terms of literacy development, but to help schools envision and pursue futures tailored specifically to their community and its needs for years to come.

The central focus of LITT is to support the creation, implementation, and maintenance of a literacy improvement plan via two series of learning modules, online sharing circles, resource access, and direct support. The first series, to be launched in 2024, will be specific to principals, vice-principals, literacy leads, and any other instructors or staff members who play leadership roles in their school’s literacy program. The second series of learning modules, due to be developed 2024-2025, focuses on supporting literacy instructors and staff, such as teachers and educational assistants (EAs).

The Impact

Strengthening literacy learning goes beyond the classroom. It starts with the collaboration of school leaders and their communities. Over the course of LITT’s leadership-focused series, participants will examine environmental, demographic, cultural, and organizational components of their schools through a literacy-centric lens. They will practice eliciting, gathering, and analyzing attendance and performance data, assessing the teaching practices and resources being used in their schools, reflecting on their own leadership practices and positionalities, and strengthening their understandings of the relationships between their schools, communities, and literacy learning as it is currently being pursued. Participants who complete all the modules in the LITT leadership series will ultimately develop a comprehensive literacy improvement plan informed by, and made for, their schools.

Our Role

The MSLP was originally created as a means of supporting literacy in Indigenous schools. The central goal for the project was to bring 80% of students in each participant school up to grade level in reading and writing by the conclusion of their Grade 3 year. MFI supported schools’ efforts to meet this goal by contributing to professional learning already in place at the school, and enhancing resources for students, school staff, and leaders. Circles of Practice focusing on deepening teachers’ practices as literacy instructors were introduced by the MSLP. Innovative use of technology was also introduced, enabling the schools to work both together and with the MSLP team, learning and sharing their best practices in early literacy education across time, distance, and cultures.

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, MSLP’s priorities shifted. Instead of striving to meet a performance goal, the project focused on meeting schools, instructors, and students where they were and providing support for literacy enrichment that best meet their needs. The LITT program was one of the results of this shift in priorities.

Explore MFI’s virtual learning hub called The Training & Resources for Early Education & Schools (TREES) Network. TREES is a space for delivering and accessing culturally appropriate training, professional development, resources, supportive circles and peer mentorship opportunities for Indigenous and non-Indigenous learning professionals working with Indigenous children, students and families.

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