Lori Larson

Lori is a 2nd grade teacher at Woodland

I shared that we had three purposes today:  to get to know one another, both personally and professionally, to discuss our work together, and to identify some successes and challenges she is seeing in her classroom in literacy instruction.

She and her husband just returned from a cruise and had a marvelous time!  Her son, Brady, will be getting married in August to Sammi.  Lori also has a daughter, Kaylee (in PA school) with whom she is very close.

Lori started out studying accounting in college, but her parents asked her to “do them a favor” and take at least one education class.  She did, and fell in love with teaching.  I asked how they knew that’s what she should try, and she said she had babysat and taught all the neighbor kids and her parents could see a teacher in her.

She has been in education for 32 years and this is her sixth year teaching second grade.  She has been at Woodland for 16 or 17 years, teaching half day K while raising her kids, then a year of all day K.  She has also taught first and third.  She has been with the same 2nd grade team since COVID.

We discussed our work together – what coaching is and what it isn’t.

When asked about successes and challenges in literacy instruction in her classroom, she shared that, according to the FastBridge (given at the beginning, middle, and end of the school year) ALL of her students have made progress.  She is still concerned about where some of her students are in reader development.  Half of her class measures as “some risk” or “at risk.”  It worries her that they are not reading at a 2nd grade level.  She identified a group on whom she might like to focus:  Brighton, Delta, and Obadiah.  They score well on phonics checks, but do not/cannot apply that knowledge when reading.  We discussed a possible fluency goal for them.