What Every Learning Leader Should Know When Coaching Teams

Erin Kent Consulting (EKC) is a collaborative of literacy strategists specialized in working with international schools. We provide customized professional learning experiences for K-12 educators that fit a school’s unique context and hold tight to research-based essentials. We’ve worked with over 100 international schools on six continents to grow joyful, responsive literacy learning. Trainings are offered in English, Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, French, and Portuguese. We offer a variety of online options for staff development: administrative consults on K-10 literacy reform or refinement, coach or lead teacher mentorship programs, live or recorded workshops on literacy topics, live Q&A sessions with grade level teams or an entire faculty, action research mentorship around a unique topic of interest for your school/country context, etc. Digital learning shrinks our already small world of international education. Reach out when you need us; you’ve got literacy experts ready to answer your questions on K-10 Readers Workshop, Writers Workshop and Word Study in international schools.

Director

Erin Kent

Erin Kent consults with international schools around the world. She helps teachers and administrators grow customized approaches to K-10 balanced literacy that fit an international school’s unique context. Erin taught literacy for many years in urban, independent, and international schools before becoming a literacy coach and then P-12 Director of Curriculum and Instruction where she led a team of 13 instructional coaches and advised K-12 administrators on establishing data-based educational initiatives. Erin has spoken many times at Columbia University Teachers College in New York City and at international conferences on Readers/ Writers Workshop methodology, literacy coaching, curriculum development, and literacy leadership.

Cailin Minor

Cailin Minor is an internationally experienced educator, literacy coach, and curriculum specialist. She has worked extensively with the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project Units of Study curriculum as well as teaching reading and writing through the workshop model. Cailin is passionate about instructional coaching, and holds an advanced certificate in Cognitive Coaching. She currently serves as a senior strategist for Erin Kent Consulting where she specializes in supporting schools in launching and sustaining the TCRWP Units of Study and workshop model in a way that supports a school’s unique needs. Cailin works with schools to create a tailored literacy vision and model that supports the specific ELL and cultural needs of a student population, the host country’s language, and the time and structures of the school. Cailin also works with schools to create a dynamic coaching program and collaborative practices that foster the literacy growth and goals.

Colleen Ackford

Colleen Ackford has worked as an IB classroom teacher, curriculum developer, reading specialist, literacy intervention teacher and literacy coach in Canada, Japan, Thailand, and Australia. Colleen has extensive experience working alongside teachers to establish reading and writing workshops in which learners take ownership of their reading and writing lives, express curiosity, and grow their thinking with peers. Colleen has guided teaching teams with developing standards-aligned units of study, progressions of learning, and assessments. She is passionate about both cognitive coaching and student-centered coaching, and has substantial experience with building and developing a coaching program and supporting individual coaches as they grow their practice. Currently, Colleen is a Learning Coach at Nido de Aguilas in Santiago, Chile.