Featured Professional Learning Opportunities
Every Conversation Counts: Building Oral Language for Literacy
PreK-KBuild your capacity to intentionally foster children’s oral language development throughout the day. You’ll leave prepared to enrich children’s vocabulary, expand their thinking, facilitate authentic conversations, and create a language-rich classroom that strengthens early literacy outcomes.
Thinking Beyond the Page: Developing Deep Comprehension
3-8Comprehension is the heart of reading—and it goes far beyond understanding the words on the page. Join us to learn practical ways to help students move from surface-level understanding to deeper analysis, meaningful reflection, and critical thinking about what they read.
Playful Pathways to Print: Learning About Language, Letters, Sounds and Words
PreK-1Explore how to turn young children’s love for playing with the sounds of language into meaningful literacy learning during this one-day workshop.
Over 35 Years of Academic Excellence in Literacy Learning
The Center for Literacy Teaching & Instructional Leadership at Lesley University has been engaged in thirty-five years of innovative, research-based, system-wide educational improvement efforts. We are focused on a single mission—to ensure that every child has the opportunity to live a literate life.
We have been working with educators in school systems to improve children’s literacy.
35 Years
of experience improving
childhood literacy
50,000+
educators served from
across the nation and
around the world
Millions
of children’s lives
improved through literacy
Featured Blog Posts
Better Together: The Case for Cluster Coaching
Discover how cluster coaching helps educators learn together, build confidence, and strengthen student outcomes.
Notebooks: Helping Students Notice, Wonder, and Think on Paper
One simple but powerful way teachers can nurture students’ curiosity is through notebooks. In classrooms, notebooks are not merely places to record learning; they create space for students to collect questions, sketches, observations, discoveries, and evolving ideas.
Poolside PD
Summer is the perfect time to slow down, recharge, and dive into a great book that refreshes your literacy knowledge. In this blog post, Cindy Downend shares a thoughtful collection of professional texts for literacy educators — covering early literacy, writing instruction, purposeful reading, and evidence-based teaching practices — all perfect for your summer poolside PD.