Vision statement
The Nevada Adolescent Literacy Network is a coalition of cross-agency partners building and bridging systems to help adolescents become fully literate individuals who are able to reach their goals.
Nevada Adolescent Literacy Network (NALN)
What is the Nevada Adolescent Literacy Network, and What is the NALN Mission?
What is NALN?
The Nevada Adolescent Literacy Network is a coalition of cross-agency partners building and bridging systems to help adolescents become fully literate individuals who are able to reach their goals.
What is the NALN Mission?
Across initiatives and regions of the state, our efforts will increase reading engagement among adolescents via adolescent-facing initiatives as well as professional learning resources for educators, community members, and families who support adolescents. Specifically, we will improve adolescents’ reading engagement by 25%, as measured by the NAEP survey questionnaire, by 2030.
About NALN
NALN’s History
In 2020, Dianna Townsend, Ed.D. at the University and Darl Kiernan, Ph.D., then at the Nevada Department of Education, founded NALN with the goal to create a connected community of adults who support teens with literacy and language development and enhance and increase support for Nevada’s teens.
Drs. Townsend and Kiernan convened the original eight-member NALN Steering Committee of educational leaders, expert teachers, teacher educators, and librarians. The Steering Committee was joined by a coaching collaborator from WestEd who provided consulting on how to adopt a continuous improvement approach to identifying, enacting, and measuring goals to support adolescent literacy in Nevada.
NALN’s Annual Goals
- Each year, there will be measurable improvement in adolescent reading engagement from individual initiatives as measured by surveys aligned to the NAEP questionnaire, focus groups, and interviews. Initiatives include:
- Adolescent reading engagement initiatives
- Adolescent writing initiatives
- Collection and dissemination of adolescent literacy data
- Creation of professional learning content and programs
- Development of community partnerships
NALN’s Accomplishments
- Completed a statewide “needs assessment” to understand Nevada’s strengths and challenges in supporting adolescent literacy
- Developed collaborative relationships with Nevada’s Regional Professional Development Program, Washoe County Library System, REL West and WestED, and fostered new collaborative relationships with additional regional and statewide organizations committed to adolescent literacy.
- Created two graphic data reports, one on adolescent literacy achievement and on adolescent reading engagement, illustrating the “State of Adolescent Literacy” in Nevada
adolescent literacy achievement adolescent reading engagement - Facilitated statewide professional learning on evidence-based practices for teaching reading comprehension in middle and high school, including a year of monthly webinar workshops with national literacy experts and a year of supporting teams of teachers and literacy leaders in implementing best practices in adolescent literacy instruction
- Formed Design Teams, which are groups of representative experts, community members, and adolescents from around Nevada, who design and facilitate NALN initiatives. Design teams have been formed to:
- study issues in adolescent literacy in Nevada
- identify promising reading engagement activities, including book clubs, currently in use in Nevada
- develop new initiatives to engage adolescents in reading and writing in Nevada, including a Nevada Adolescent Writing Magazine
- prepare resources on adolescent literacy for educators and leaders in Nevada, including two graphic data reports
- create an online clearinghouse of adolescent literacy resources for educators in Nevada, including a draft website and social media presence
NALN Needs Assessment Findings
Themes from statewide data on adolescent literacy achievement
- Based on Nevada’s achievement tests, fewer than half of Nevada’s eighth graders read at the proficient level.
- Based on federal data, 38% of Nevada’s eighth grade students read below the basic level.
- Prominent racial disparities exist, with the scores of Black, Hispanic, and American Indian/Alaskan Native students suggesting far fewer or lower-quality educational opportunities.
Themes from interviews of educators and leaders around Nevada who support adolescents
- Teachers need sustained, research-based professional learning opportunities to support adolescent literacy.
- Adolescents need choice and relevance in their reading and writing activities.
- Social emotional learning is a critical component of supporting adolescent literacy.
Themes from listening sessions with Nevada’s adolescents
- Teens need diversity in approaches to support their literacy habits and purposes – one size does not fit all.
- Teens wish teachers had more empathy and flexibility for their out-of-school lives.
- Social media is a “mixed bag”: it offers important opportunities for connection and learning at the same time as it promotes negative content and misinformation.
- Teens value writing and write for a variety of purposes in their personal lives.
NALN Steering Committee Leadership
NALN Steering Committee Collaborator | Improvement Specialist | WestEd, Region 15CC
Treasurer | Southern Nevada Regional Professional Development Program
Secretary | Washoe County Library System Librarian
Vice-President | Former Professional Learning Leader, NNRPDP & Former K-12 ELA Programs Professional, NDE
NALN Steering Committee Members at Large
Steering Committee Member at Large, Professional Learning Leader, Northeastern Nevada Regional Professional Development Program
K-8 ELA Education Programs Professional, NDE
Steering Committee Member at Large, Middle School ELA/Social Studies Teacher, WCSD
Assistant Professor, English Education, BYU
Steering Committee Member at Large, Education Programs Professional, Read by Grade 3 Team, NDE
Steering Committee Member at Large, Principal at Pershing County High School
Steering Committee Member at Large, Doctoral Student in Literacy Studies, University of Nevada, Reno
Steering Committee Member at Large, High School ELA Teacher, CCSD
Steering Committee Member at Large, Education Programs Professional, Secondary ELA and K-12 World Languages, NDE
Past Members of NALN Steering Committee
NALN is extremely grateful to past members of the NALN Steering Committee who helped to build NALN from the ground up.
- Mariluz Garcia
- Lisa Johnson
- Sarah Negrete
- Shaughn Richardson
- Marc Rincon
References
Carnegie Council on Advancing Adolescent Literacy. (2010). Time to act: An agenda for advancing adolescent literacy for college and career success. New York, NY: Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Guthrie, J. T., Wigfield, A., & You, W. (2012). Instructional contexts for engagement and achievement in reading. In Handbook of research on student engagement (pp. 601–634). Springer Science + Business Media.
Agency partners
