VIRGINIA SCHOOL UNIVERSITY
PARTNERSHIP

Upcoming Workshops & Conferences: 
                                                                                                       

February 26, 2010 - Building Capacity for Teacher Leadership: Teachers as School Leaders and Coaches - Part 1
Presenter: Dr. Laurie McCullough
Location: Charlottesville, VA
This workshop is intended for teachers and others in leadership roles. The day will focus on developing the skills necessary to serve as effecive instructional leaders for colleagues. The session is appropriate for instructional coaches, department chairs, team leaders, mentors, and also for administrators who wish to enhance their coaching and negotiation skills. Communication and coaching will be the primary focus areas. The session will also address the most important aspects of leading change, such as goal definition, building consensus, managing decision-making, and measuring and celebrating progress. Case studies and interactive experiences will be used to practice problem-solving and reflection. Dr. McCullough presentered this workshop in 2009 and is back by popular demand. Also participants of this workshop and last year's workshop will receive registration information on Part 2 of the workshop which will be held on March 23, 2010.

WORKSHOPS COMPLETED 2009-10

October 16, 2009 - The Middle and High School Principal's Role in Creating and Maintaining Strong Literacy Programs at the Secondary Level
Presenter: Virginia Bowerman
Location: Charlottesville, VA
This workshop is designed specifically to provide clear and concise strategies for secondary principals, assistant principals, and curriculum leaders in building and strengthening a culture of literacy achievement for all students by creating a school-wide literacy program. The presenter will review current trends in adolescent literacy achievement. Research-based, essential literacy components for every classroom and best practices in literacy education for middle and high school will be addressed. In addition, the roles of literacy personnel and the use of data to impact literacy achievement will be discussed. Strategies for improving vocabulary acquisition, understanding instructional levels, and using texts will be provided. Also participants will learn about intervention programs available for working with struggling and ELL students, including Response to Intervention. Administrators will have an opportunity to talk with other principals about their efforts to increase literacy achivement.

October 21, 2009 - Creating Independent, Strategie Readers and Writers in Middle School and High School
Presenter: Sue Beers
Locatiion: Charlottesville, VA
In this workshop, participants will learn practical classroom strategies for helping students become better readers of content area text and better writers. A model for understanding the overall reading process, including the reader, classroom climate, the reading task, text features and processing strategies will frame specific classroom tools that can be used to improve student comprehension of reading tasks. Tools and strategies for pre-, during and post-reading comprehension activities will be modeled and shared as participants learn how content area teachers can improve the reading comprehension of all students while students also gain and retain a deeper understanding of the content itself.

•essential components of curriculum, instruction, and learning
to better align with critical knowledge, vocabulary and skills;
•adjustments to current pacing guides and curriculum maps; and
• ideas and strategies to focus division, school, and classroom programs
on both formative and summative assessments.
Each participant will be provided with a toolkit of new resources
to assist Virginia’s educators in effectively preparing for implementation
of the new mathematics SOL.

WORKSHOPS COMPLETED 2008-09

February 24, 2009
Building Capacity for Teacher Leadership-Teachers as School Leaders and Coaches
Audience: teachers, administrators, coaches, instructional specialists
Presenter: Dr. Laurie McCullough, Assistant Superintendent, Waynesboro City Schools; VASCD Curriculum Leader of the Year 2008

This workshop is intended for teachers in leadership roles. The day will focus on helping these teachers develop the skills necessary to serve as effective instructional leaders for colleagues. The session is appropriate for instructional coaches, department chairs, team leaders, mentors, and also for administrators who wish to enhance their coaching skills. Communication and coaching will be the primary focus areas. The session will also address the most important aspects of leading change, such as goal definition, building consensus, managing decision-making, and measuring and celebrating progress. Case studies and interactive experiences will be used to practice problem-solving and reflection.

July 30-31, 2008 Summer Leadership Conference
"WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A CHANGE LEADER?"
Presenter: Dr. Tony Wagner, Co-Director of the Change Leadership Group (CLG), Harvard School of Education

This two day leadership conference for school district administrators, principals, assistant principals, and lead teachers focused on the key points from Wagner's book Change Leadership: A Practical Guide to Transforming Our Schools, written in collaboration with Robert Kegan and colleagues of the Change Leadership Group, and published by Jossey-Bass in 2006. Wagner is also the author of Making the Grade: Reinventing America's Schools and How Schools Change: Lessons from Three Communities Revisited. His latest book is The Global Achievement Gap: Why Our Kids Don't Have The Skills They Need for College, Careers, and Citizenship-And What We Can Do was published in 2008. During this conference, school teams participated in problem solving and planning for addressing the challenges of 21st Century leadership in their school divisions.

September 16, 2008
Research-based Standards and Strategies to Increase Student Success on the VGLA (Virginia Grade Level Alternative)
Presenter: Stephanie Haskins, Director of Special Education, Staunton City Schools, Charlottesville, VA
This workshop for administrators, classroom and special education teachers examined how the collection of VGLA evidence is a natural fit within the regular classroom in equipping teachers with understandings and materials that help them with the process. Key topic included: defining VGLA, including the intent as well as candidates; examining specific resources; creating quality assessments aligned with the SOLS, and managing the VGLA process in any school division. Participants also received a CD of practical resources to use with student instruction and assessment.

October 2, 2008
Reading Motivation-Proficiency, Persistence, Passion
Presenter: Dr. Linda Gambrell, Immediate Past President of the International Reading Association, Distinguished Professor of Education, Clemson University
This workshop for administrators, lead teachers, reading specialists, curriculum specialists and classroom teachers in grades 3-8 focused on major research which can be applied in classroom instruction to promote literacy motivation, discussion in teaching and learning, and comprehension monitoring. Gambrell provided guidelines for improving the literacy skills of struggling learners. Key strategies and activities to use across all content areas were provided to participants.

October 27, 2008
Response to Intervention- What Teachers and Administrators Need to Know and Do
Presenter: Dr. Tom Jenkins, Response to Intention Consultant, Wilmington, NC
During this workshop, Dr. Jenkins provided teachers and administrators with hands-on activities, models, and information to assist schools and school divisions in the implementation of RTI, including universal screening, standard protocol intervention, problem solving model, curriculum- based measurement, and student outcome measures. Jenkins explained the similarities and differences in current identification and referral procedures for intervention and special services for students, including practice and understanding of discrepancy analysis and its uses in assisting at-risk students.

November 5, 2008
MASTERING THE MATH SOLS: Synthesizing and Applying All We Have Learned from 3 years of Yearly SOL Testing in Math
Presenter: Dr. Dan Mulligan -President and Consultant-Simply Achieve, Inc

This activity-based workshop featured new assessment and instruction strategies that are grounded to meet the opportunities and challenges presented by teaching and learning in an era of yearly testing in mathematics. Participants were actively involved in using model structures to empower students with a deep understanding of problem-solving skills and provided an understanding of how to improve students' mathematical performance through Identifying essential components of curriculum, instruction, and learning to better align with essential skills: (Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, Communication & Collaboration); balancing division and classroom assessment programs to reflect an emphasis on both formative and summative models; focusing teacher professional learning community discussion to include strategies to guide students to become inquisitive, disciplined thinkers and questioning minds; creating valid and reliable measurement tools to support the impact of yearly SOL test results on student mastery of essential knowledge and essential skills specified by the Virginia Standards of Learning. Participants were provided with a toolkit of new math strategies.