Carthage teacher among 12 inaugural fellows of Scholastic program

Mar. 3—Christina Landburg, a fourth grade teacher in Carthage, is one of 12 teachers nationwide to be selected by Scholastic for its inaugural Teacher Fellow Cohort, a program that aims to help develop the publishing company's instructional offerings and provide professional development opportunities.

The team of K-8 teachers will collaborate with Scholastic Education Solutions' product development, research and publishing teams through July. They also will each complete a capstone project to be showcased at Scholastic's New York City headquarters this summer.

"Teachers are at the heart of Scholastic," said Amanda Alexander, chief academic officer, in a statement. "This important program will bring their intimate knowledge deeper into our work and will ultimately help us create materials that better support students and families."

So far, the teachers have read several book proposals from authors of teacher professional development books and have provided feedback on what they liked or didn't like, and on how the authors could make their books more appealing to educators, Landburg said. The team also has helped select book titles and covers, she said.

"I am happy to help in any area I can, and I am hopeful that my knowledge will help Scholastic make improvements that will impact teachers across the nation," she said in an email to the Globe.

For her capstone project, Landburg will work with a literacy team to develop communication tools to support independent reading at home and expand mentorship programs to support teachers.

"My team is focused on the REAL (Read, Excel, Achieve, Lead) Program and the My Books Everyday Program," she said. "More specifically, we will be giving feedback on how to best implement these programs within communities and classroom, and how we think Scholastic can help bridge communication barriers between school and home, or school and the community."

Landburg said she hopes to incorporate these programs into her own classroom with a grant she recently was awarded from the local Tiger Pride Kindness Endowment.

"I used the grant to purchase a program called Thrively for my students to use in our classroom. This program allows students to complete passion projects on social-emotional learning topics, on their personal interests, and future careers. I would like to bring in mentors to visit my classroom, specifically people who have careers that my students are interested in learning about through their chosen passion projects," she said. "This will help increase engagement when the REAL mentors come to read stories to my class. It will also allow my students' families to be able to reinforce some great social-emotional skills through the use of Thrively and the My Books Everyday program combined."

The state of Missouri also has a second representative in the program with Dorita Barr, a reading specialist and instructional coach at Crossroads Preparatory Academy in Kansas City. Her capstone project will involve researching strategies for family engagement, independent reading, interactive read-alouds and culturally responsive instruction, she said.

"During my tenure as an educator, one thing that I've found to be true across different contexts is that family engagement tends to lead to better academic outcomes for students. At the same time, schools struggle to garner family participation for a number of reasons," she said in an email to the Globe. "By engaging in this work, we can help other classroom teachers to implement strategies that engage families in meaningful ways. Additionally, the focus on culturally responsive literacy strategies will provide a springboard for increasing student participation in independent reading and engagement during interactive read-alouds."