Seeing Big: Tensions and Triumphs in Partnerships for Professional Development

As foreshadowed by our opening discussion, the first four chapters of Developing knowledge communities through partnerships for literacy present a complex collection of stories of recognized tensions and triumphs across efforts to support teacher development in K-12 contexts.

The beginning two chapters, Chapter 2 and Chapter 3, address the impact of disruptive natural disasters on the enactment of teacher development programs when they are most needed. Tina Angelo and Maryann Gremillion, authors of Chapter 2, Innovation and integrity: Working through disruption to support teachers in their roles as literacy educators, discuss the hurricane, pandemic, and other influences on the structure of WITS′ Collaborative and the on-the-spot planning and execution of modified protocols for professional development cycles. After that, Chestin T. Auzenne-Curl, Gayle Curtis, and Cheryl Craig take up the implications of the primary and secondary traumatic stressors as they surface on campuses as they describe in Chapter 3, Reflections on Research and Professional Development Partnerships in Post-Harvey Houston. Angelo and Gremillion's Chapter 2 is written from the position of WITS faculty, while Auzenne-Curl, Curtis, and Craig's positionality is that of researchers devoted to an insider perspective – albeit from a different purview.

Chapters 4 and 5 move us to a direct view of campus life in the view of campus and district level administrators and instructional specialists. As we enter Chapter 4, Reflections on Principal Leadership and Writers in the Schools, Michael Curl and Cheryl Craig present considerations for administrators who seek to reform practice and protect the essence of teacher's work in a knowledge community. This work is complimented by stories of Daphne Carr and Chestin T. Auzenne-Curl who close out Section I with Chapter 5, Navigating the Role of Teacher Educators in the Field: The Case For Increased Community Support. They home in on the nature and needs of literacy coaches and others who are in similar roles whether they are housed in or intermittently work on K-12 campuses.