Centers for Literacy Education

Teams that earn recognition as Centers for Literacy Education (CLE) are the heart of NCLE—the national movement to enrich literacy learning for all students. By sharing their ongoing work, they provide a window into how to build the organizational conditions that foster deeper learning in every discipline. In return for their willingness to share, CLE’s are eligible to receive expert advice about how to pursue their professional goals and recognition of their ongoing efforts from leading education organizations and in local media outlets. They have stories worth telling!

Here’s how it works…

Centers for Literacy Education (CLE) are collaborative groups who are willing to publicly commit to:

• consistently engage in collaborative professional practices focused on improving literacy learning,
• pay attention to the process of collaborative learning in addition to the content of professional learning, and
• regularly share their work with the NCLE community through stories, reflections, and artifacts of work at their site.

To apply for recognition as a Center for Literacy Education:

• Register as an Exchange Team and complete the Group Profile. 
   
• Invite members of your group to join this Exchange team using the built-in invitation process to provide a direct link to the registration form.
   
• Complete the Asset Inventory, a short survey (10 minutes or less) designed as a self-assessment of a group’s professional learning structures and processes. Upon completion, your group will receive a report individually tailored with suggestions to support your learning. In order for the survey results to be meaningful for your group, as many group members as possible should complete it (at least 3 group members must complete the survey before your group receives its results or earns recognition).
      
• Identify and post a literacy goal for the academic year. This should address an inquiry question in the area of literacy teaching and learning on which you want to work this year. Although it is not a requirement, we also encourage you to name a capacity-building goal as identified through the asset inventory process.
       
• Publicly share your learning by accepting “followers” of your NCLE Exchange Team.

To maintain your CLE status, your group needs to establish and carry out an inquiry or professional learning plan, and share artifacts of this work with the larger NCLE Network. The NCLE Community Facilitators provide support to your group throughout this process by pointing to resources relevant to your work and helping your group find others in the network with similar needs and interests.

To learn more about what it means to be a Center for Literacy Education, contact NCLE directly.