The First Year is Just the Beginning: One District’s Curriculum Implementation Story

Start with coherence—Take stock before adding something new 

Before Savannah-Chatham could think about implementation, the district had to confront what Burkiett calls "a coherence problem." Like many large districts, they had accumulated years of initiatives, like supplemental programs, intervention tools, and stand-alone assessments. The initiatives all layered on top of a balanced literacy framework that provided a philosophy but not a unified curriculum. 

"We had a lot of teachers and schools doing a little of this, and a little of that," she said. "That was one of our first systems that we realized was not cohesive." 

Their response was a coherence map: a visual inventory of every initiative in the system, who it was for, and what it was meant to accomplish. They needed to see clearly what was already in place, what is repetitive, and where there are still gaps in meeting every students’ needs before they could make the case for anything new. 

As Burkiett puts it, a recipe isn't a meal. "You can have all of those things, but if they don't come together collectively and cohesively, they don't do you any good." 

Decide what's non-negotiable—and say so explicitly 

Savannah-Chatham built what Burkiett calls a "tightly and loosely held" framework. This helped to make explicit decisions about what the district owns and what teachers retain agency over. They made those decisions before the school year started and communicated them clearly. 

"The tightly [held expectations are] non-negotiable. Things like, you will use the HQIM during your literacy instruction. You will use the texts that are there, and you will use evidence-aligned instruction," she explained. "What you can decide is how you respond to groups, how you choose to engage students and scaffolds. There's an art and a science to teaching. We are going to make sure the 'what' is provided so teachers can talk about and plan for the 'how.'" 

District-level consistency in content, teacher-level agency in delivery. Teachers keep their professional judgment. They're also freed from decisions that should have been made at the system level which means they can focus on the classroom. 

The district went a step further and pre-aligned every Into Reading lesson to Georgia standards, so that work didn't consume collaborative planning time. "It's our belief that our teachers don't need to sit down in collaborative planning and look through the teacher's edition and make a decision about what is and isn't aligned to our standards," Burkiett said. "We make that decision collectively as a district." 

Professional learning can't be a single event 

A strong launch does not carry a team through a full school year of instructional change. This is one of the clearest lessons from districts in the middle of HQIM implementation. 

"Professional learning has to be ongoing," Burkiett said. "We can't just do a one-time shot, can't just be two days in the year. We're teaching literacy every single day. It has to be job-embedded, it has to be ongoing, and it has to be multifaceted." 

Savannah-Chatham layered their approach. System-wide planning days gave every teacher exposure to the same content. On-site coaching days — two per school in year one, three in year two—gave schools space to address their specific implementation challenges. Those coaching agendas were set by the school, not the district. 

"Schools have individual needs too," Burkiett noted. "Those coaching days are the opportunity for us to bring in an expert to help the school with the needs that they have regarding implementation." 

HMH's implementation services work the same way: embedded coaching tailored to each school’s needs rather than running the same agenda regardless of context. Districts that treat implementation support as an ongoing partnership, rather than a launch resource, tend to see more traction in year one and beyond. 

Collaborative planning is where implementation takes root or stalls 

Without structure, planning time collapses into logistics. What page are we on? Which story this week? These conversations feel productive. They rarely are. 

"We're not talking about page numbers in collaborative planning," Burkiett said. "We're talking about how are students going to engage in the text. How are they going to show and demonstrate their learning through the task that they're completing? What are they doing cognitively?" 

To get planning conversations to that level, Savannah-Chatham built a planning notebook. This is a feedback-tested tool that walks teachers through backwards design, pre-module assessment planning, and weekly protocols aligned to the Into Reading cycle. Standards were already aligned to each lesson. Look-fors for foundational skills and vocabulary were built in. The template was designed to prompt the right conversation, not document the logistics of the week. 

For Burkiett, effective planning comes down to a deep understanding of the content. "If you don't internalize what students need to know and be able to do, when a teacher gets up, or a leader comes in to model, you can't anticipate misconceptions. You can't make those in-the-moment shifts that you need to make." 

Teachers need to know the content deeply enough to teach it responsively: to notice when students aren't tracking, to adjust mid-lesson, to connect foundational skills to reading to writing the way strong literacy instruction demands. 

Monitor one thing at a time 

Burkiett described a monthly to six-week cadence of classroom visits involving both school-based and district-based observers. Rather than trying to monitor everything at once, each cycle focused attention on a specific area of practice. The purpose was consistency and making sure everyone was looking for the same things and giving feedback that pointed in the same direction.  

For districts using HMH materials, core action walks provide that shared observation language for measuring an area like instructional routines, for example. This research-based framework helps support strong HQIM implementation in practice. 

Connect the work; Reduce the noise 

One of the most damaging things a district can do during year one is layer new initiatives on top of the curriculum without connecting them. It can lead to confusion and exhaustion. 

Science of reading training, HQIM, and universal screeners are all important, Burkiett said, but the real value comes when teachers can "draw the line and understand how they're connected." 

When teachers can't see how the pieces fit together, every new initiative lands as one more demand. The system's job is to make those connections visible through the language leaders use, through planning tools, through honest decisions about which initiatives continue and which get cut. 

Before year two, it's worth asking whether every teacher on your team can name the thread that runs through everything they're being asked to do.