Goyen Literacy Fellowship

We are thrilled to announce that applications for the third cohort of Goyen Literacy Fellows (2024-25 school year) are now available.

You can apply here!!!

You can nominate an incredible candidate here!!!

So what does this mean?

It means that the Goyen Foundation will pay teachers $2,000 to document excellent literacy teaching in their classrooms. If you want to get paid to help us create a library of content like this, keep reading…

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1. What will the Fellows do?  

Our fellows will document and share their exceptional, structured, and evidenced-based literacy instruction through videos, student work samples, and photographs. In other words, they will show the rest of us what exceptional, structured, and evidenced-based literacy instruction looks like in the real world. 

Our fellows will also spend time in (virtual) community with one another, getting to know each other and learning from each other.

For our third cohort, we will be asking fellows to capture longer videos of more complete lessons instead of exclusively focusing on shorter clips. We will also explore a wider range of platforms to distribute this content. 

2. Who should apply? 

You should apply for this fellowship if you…

• Implement structured literacy in your classroom.

• Want to share your practice with other educators and respond to their questions. 

• Want to connect with and learn from like-minded peers during monthly fellowship meetings.

• Believe in the importance of systematic foundational skills instruction AND building content and background knowledge through rich, authentic texts.

• Are interested in exploring ways to get high-quality teaching content in the hands of curious teachers. 

• Live in the United States. 

• Think you would enjoy this work, 

In other words, if you’re a teacher who is committed to structured literacy, we want to hear from you! Our assumption is that most of our applicants will be elementary and middle school teachers, but if you are bringing structured literacy to a high school setting, please apply!!!

3. What does the fellowship entail?

• The fellowship program will run for the entirety of the 2024-25 school year. 

• Over the course of the school year, fellows will document their literacy teaching practice through videos, pictures, and writing, with an emphasis on capturing longer videos. 

• Fellows will write 1-2 blog posts about teaching reading.

• Fellows will attend 1-2 Sunday night meetings per month for the school year.

• Fellows will lead 1 of those Sunday night meetings.

• Fellows will allow the Goyen Foundation to share their work on social media platforms and to store it on their website. 

• Fellows will receive a $2,000 stipend. They will receive half at the beginning of the school year and half at the end of the school year. 

4. Why did you create this fellowship? 

• To celebrate you and other teachers and your excellent work.

• To offer teachers, school leaders, and researchers concrete examples of exceptional literacy instruction.

• To showcase how beautiful, engaging, and diverse structured literacy is.

• To build a network of educators who are purposefully and thoughtfully sharing their practice around literacy instruction. 

5. What does the application timeline look like?

6. What will the finalist task entail?

The finalist task is linked here. It will involve taking a video of your teaching and then explaining the video. 

7. How many fellows will you select?

We will select at least 10 fellows this school year.

8. Is there anything you’re looking for in particular?

We’re looking to assemble a diverse class of fellows that represent different types of schools and curricular materials. We prize curiosity because we have found that our most productive fellows are teachers who are eager to grow and have lots of questions and ideas about teaching and learning that they want to test out. We have also found that fellows who actively want to connect with and learn from other educators from different schools and contexts have a better experience overall. 

9. How is this year’s fellowship program different from the past two cohorts?

It’s different in two primary ways. First, we will be asking fellows to take longer videos (think 15-30 minutes) that capture the entirety of a lesson or activity. As a result, we will deemphasize shorter, more frequent videos. Second, past fellows have intensively documented their practice over an 8 week timeframe. We have found that timeframe to be limiting and will instead be asking fellows to capture their instruction over the course of the entire school year. Again, this will spread out the workload of the fellowship. 

10. Other questions?

You can:

• Email Kata at kata.solow@goyen.io 

• Stop by a totally optional Zoom information session at one of the following times: February 29 at 8PM EST or March 4 at 8PM EST

• Reach out to our current first class of Goyen Literacy Fellows.