Cynthia Greenleaf Co-Director, Strategic Literacy Initiative For over two decades, Cynthia Greenleaf has helped students become more successful readers and writers. As Co-Director of WestEd’s Strategic Literacy Initiative (SLI), Greenleaf has helped increase access to higher-level literacy learning for adolescents, particularly those who have not yet met their academic potential. In 1995, Greenleaf, SLI Co-Director Ruth Schoenbach, and other staff developed the Reading Apprenticeship® instructional framework, which they describe in their best-selling WestEd book, Reading for Understanding: A Guide to Improving Reading in Middle and High School Classrooms. This book has become the catalyst for an international movement of educators who use the Reading Apprenticeship framework in their local schools — from elementary schools to community colleges to teacher education courses. In response to requests for training related to Reading for Understanding, SLI has developed national training institutes, regional professional development services, a growing cadre of certified consultants, and numerous publications and tools for classroom and professional development use. Literacy coaches, middle and high school teachers, district and site administrators, community college teachers and teacher educators from more than 28 states and Germany have participated in SLI-led professional development, impacting an estimated 170,000 students nationally and several thousand more in Germany, where Reading for Understanding has been translated into German. Numerous local studies in schools and districts reflect promising outcomes for students whose teachers are implementing Reading Apprenticeship. The Reading Apprenticeship framework is cited as one of four promising adolescent literacy programs in Reading Next, a document on adolescent literacy published by the Alliance for Excellent Education. In addition, the Reading Apprenticeship Academic Literacy course was chosen in 2005 as one of only two adolescent literacy programs in the nation designated by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences for further study and evaluation. SLI was chosen by an independent panel of experts on adolescent literacy, which evaluated the extent to which an adolescent reading program is high quality, including issues of how to motivate adolescents to read, whether there is research-based evidence of the program’s effectiveness, and whether the program is comprehensive and linked to content-area reading. Greenleaf directs the research program of the Strategic Literacy Initiative and is currently directing two multi-year experimental studies of the impact of Reading Apprenticeship professional development on high school biology and U.S. history teaching and learning. [These studies are funded by the National Science Foundation and the Institute of Education Sciences.] Greenleaf has contributed to several books on literacy and education, including Education Policy and Practice: Bridging the Divide, Improving Reading Achievement through Professional Development, and Bridging the Literacy Achievement Gap Grades 4 – 12, and has co-authored numerous articles appearing in such publications as the Harvard Educational Review and the Phi Delta Kappan. Greenleaf has received many awards and honors for her work in language and literacy teaching, including Best Dissertation Award from Division G of the American Educational Research Association; Presidential Grant for School Improvement Dissertation Award from the University of California, Berkeley; and Promising Researcher Award from the National Council of Teachers of English. She received a PhD and MA in language and literacy education from the University of California, Berkeley, and a BA in linguistics from the University of California, San Diego, where she graduated magna cum laude. Tel: 510.302.4222 Email: cgreenl@wested.org Mailing Address: 300 Lakeside Drive, 25th Floor Oakland, California 94612-3540 Resource Involvement: Best Practices in Adolescent Literacy Instruction Education Policy and Practice: Bridging the Divide Literacy Instruction in the Content Areas: Getting to the Core of Middle and High School Improvement Reading for Understanding: A Guide to Improving Reading in Middle and High School Classrooms