FEATURED SPEAKERS
Friday March 28
Session I (March 28, 2008; 8:30-9:40 AM)
March 28, 2008 8:30-9:40 AM
Venue: Convention Hall
Title: Creating Conditions that Promote Student Achievement
Presenter: Pedro Noguera
Audience: All
Conference Themes: Promoting High Intellectual Performance and Enrichment
While the movement for standards and accountability has largely succeeded in bringing greater attention to the issues surrounding student achievement, surprisingly little attention has been given to what it takes to create conditions in schools that will make achievement more likely. Missing from much of the policy debate related to achievement is how to support and cultivate effective teaching in schools. This presentation will describe strategies that have proven effective elsewhere at supporting teaching and learning. It will also explore how schools can develop effective partnerships with parents to further efforts to raise achievement and how data can be used to develop school reforms that lead to transformations in the culture and structure of schools.
Pedro Noguera, PhD, is a professor in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at New York University. He is also the Executive Director of the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education and the co-Director of the Institute for the study of Globalization and Education in Metropolitan Settings (IGEMS). An urban sociologist, Noguera’s scholarship and research focuses on the ways in which schools are influenced by social and economic conditions in the urban environment. Noguera has served as an advisor and engaged in collaborative research with several large urban school districts throughout the United States. He has also done research on issues related to education and economic and social development in the Caribbean, Latin America and several other countries throughout the world. Between 2000 and 2003, Noguera served as the Judith K. Dimon Professor of Communities and Schools at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. From 1990 to 2000, he was a Professor in Social and Cultural Studies at the Graduate School of Education and the Director of the Institute for the Study of Social Change at the University of California, Berkeley.
March 28, 2008 8:30-9:40 AM
Venue: Swyer Theater (at the Egg)
Title: Educator Preparation and the Development of Children and Youth
Presenter: James Comer
Audience: All
Conference Themes: Promoting High Intellectual Performance and Enrichment; Educator Preparation
Development and the kind of learning that is needed for school and life success are inextricably linked. All children are underdeveloped and need support from birth to maturity; and children from non-mainstream family and social networks are in greatest need. Many educators, through no fault of their own, are not prepared to support development in practice. This presentation will explore the link between development and learning and will consider a framework for preparing pre and in-service educators to apply developmental principals in practice.
James P. Comer, M.D., M.P.H., the Maurice Falk Professor of Child Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine's Child Study Center, has been a Yale medical faculty member since 1968. During these years, he has concentrated his career on promoting a focus on child development as a way of improving schools. His efforts in support of healthy development of young people are known internationally.
Dr. Comer perhaps is best known for the founding of the Comer School Development Program in 1968, which promotes the collaboration of parents, educators, and community to improve social, emotional, and academic outcomes for children that, in turn, helps them achieve greater school success. His concept of teamwork has improved the educational environment in more than 500 schools throughout America.
March 28, 2008 8:30-9:40 AM
Venue: Room 6 (at the Convention Center)
Title: Adolescent Literacy: Fact, Fiction, and Future
Presenter: Donna Alvermann
Audience: All
Conference Theme: Assessment, Language Development and Literacy
Much has been written lately about the adolescent literacy achievement gap. Some of that information distorts what the research actually says about adolescent literacy, per se. This session will focus on the fact, fiction, and future of adolescent literacy in relation to closing the achievement gap.
Donna Alvermann is Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Georgia, where she teaches courses on young people’s literacies (digital, visual, and print). From 1992 to1997, she co-directed the National Reading Research Center, funded by the U.S. Department of Education. A past co-chair of IRA’s Adolescent Literacy Commission and immediate past-editor of Reading Research Quarterly, Alvermann has also worked on the 2009 NAEP reading framework. Her books include Content Area Reading and Literacy: Succeeding in Today’s Diverse Classrooms (5th ed.), Reconceptualizing the Literacies in Adolescents’ Lives (2nd ed.), and Adolescents and Literacies in a Digital World.
Session II (March 28, 2008; 10:00-11:30 AM)
March 28, 2008 10:00-11:30 AM
Venue: Convention Hall
Gerald D. Jennings, Mayor of Albany, New York
Richard P. Mills, President of The University of the State of New York (USNY) and Commissioner of Education
H.E. Asaf Shariv, Counsel General of Israel in New York
Neil D. Breslin, New York State Senator
Thomas L. Rogers, Executive Director, New York State Council of School Superintendents
Richard Iannuzzi, President, NYSUT
Special Presenter: Dan Iannicola, Jr., Deputy Assistant Secretary for Financial Education, United States Department of the Treasury, will speak to the importance of financial literacy in urban schools.
NUA’s Tribute To the Life and Work of Asa Hilliard III
Keynote Title: Poverty Is Not Destiny
Presenters: Eric Cooper
Audience: All
The Keynote Presentation will focus on the belief systems and expectations, which determine student outcomes. The speaker will cite data to support the reality that virtually all school children and youth can graduate from high school sufficiently prepared to attend a university or college. The presentation will emphasize research, and cultural and cognitive strategies. The speaker will define the political, administrative and instructional obstacles which deny opportunities for high intellectual performance by all students as well as methods for overcoming these obstacles.
Eric Cooper is the President and a Founder of the National Urban Alliance. He is an expert on the state of current American education and a nationally known advocate for the children of America’s urban schools.
Ticketed Luncheon
(March 28, 2008; 11:40 AM-12:45 PM)
March 28, 2008 11:40 AM- 12:45 PM
Venue: Room 6 (Convention Center)
Presenter: David Roth
Audience: All
Award-winning singer/songwriter/speaker David Roth returns to NUA TFI:BTA from his home on the Cape Cod, MA. The widely traveled recording artist appears at conferences, concert halls, retreats, and trainings throughout North America with keynote conferences and community building workshops.
Since emerging twenty years ago from a nationwide field of several hundred songwriters to open the Kerrville (TX) Music Festival as its New Folk winner, the Chicago native (and two-time national anthem singer for the NBA's Michael Jordan-era Bulls) has garnered accolades for his performances, workshops, writing, and recordings. In addition to singing Earth at the 40th Anniversary of the United Nations, David's Rising in Love was performed at the 100th Anniversary of Carnegie Hall in New York City. Manuel Garcia and Nine Gold Medals both appear in the best-selling Chicken Soup for the Soul series by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, and music fans may have heard David's songs in the repertoire of Peter, Paul, & Mary over the years (Noel Paul Stookey also produced If You Can't Fly for his 2002 children's album World Around Song). The BOSE Corporation includes Taller Than My Hair and Five Blind Men on their recent "best of new folk" compilations. David has ten CDs on the Wind River and Stockfisch (Germany) labels, and is proud to include We Belong Together (co-written with 92 third-graders) on his latest recording Practice Makes Progress.
Session III (March 28, 2008; 12:45-1:55 PM)
March 28, 2008 12:45-1:55 PM
Venue: Swyer Theater (at the Egg)
Title: Vision and Collaborative Leadership: Keys to Improving Adolescent Literacy Achievement
Presenter: Donna Ogle
Audience: All
Conference Theme: Assessment, Language Development and Literacy
Accelerating middle and secondary literacy achievement requires the combined effort of the whole school. Administrators and teachers, who develop literacy teams, engage together in sustained professional development, create engaging settings for student learning and who set high goals for a whole school make a difference. Donna Ogle will discuss these components through the lens of her own work in Chicago schools as part of three on-going professional collaborations: Transitional Adolescent Literacy Leadership Project, the Advancing Literacy for Learning Project, and the Striving Readers Research Project.
Donna Ogle is a professor in the Reading and Language Department of the National-Louis University. Her primary areas of interest are reading strategies and the process of instructional change in schools. The K-W-L strategy that she belief in the power of teacher collaboration and a strong conviction that “teachers, teaching teachers” has a remarkable impact on student achievement.
March 28, 2008 12:45-1:55 PM
Venue: Convention Hall
Title: Keeping African American & Hispanic Boys Out of Special Ed
Presenter: Jawanza Kunjufu
Audience: All
Conference Theme: Learning Needs of Boys
Is there a relationship between special education and prison, illiteracy and incarceration, Ritalin & cocaine?
Do some governors determine prison growth based on fourth grade reading scores? How can we save Black Can Hispanic males? Is it possible that their future could be in the hands of White female teachers?
Do boys have different learning styles than girls? Do schools make allowances for these gender differences? What has been the success rate of single gender classrooms and schools?
Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu is an educational consultant with African-American Images. He is constantly on the lecture circuit with over thirty different workshops, addressing students, parents, teachers, and community residents; in pre-schools elementary schools, high-schools: colleges and churches. He is also the author of Countering the Conspiracy to Destroy Black Boys; Motivating Black Youth to Work; Children Are the Reward of Life; Lessons from History; A Celebration in Blackness, Elementary & High School; and, To be Popular or Smart: The Black Peer Group.
March 28, 2008 12:45-1:55 PM
Venue: Clark Auditorium (Museum)
Title: The Right Stuff: The Practical Necessity of Teacher Beliefs
Presenters: Mike Froning
Audience: All
Conference Theme: Educator Preparation
The simple truth that teachers must believe in the capacity of their children to learn has far-reaching implications from teaching style to classroom management to selection of content and its organization. In this wide-ranging presentation and discussion, Mike will bring his thirty-five years of experience as a classroom teacher and his new life as a teacher educator together to emphasize the practical necessity of teachers’ having deeply held notions of equity and diversity.
A native of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, Mike is a 1963 graduate of the University of Notre Dame. He immediately went on to the Johns Hopkins University where he graduated with a Master of Arts in Teaching. He began teaching in 1963 at Western High School in Baltimore, a public school for girls that still maintains it single sex designation. He married Lyn soon after and in 1968 they moved to Pago Pago, American Samoa, where both were television teachers.
In 1970 they moved to Hawaii where Mike taught at Honolulu’s Kawananakoa Middle School for four years. Then it was on to Amherst, Massachusetts and the Amherst Regional Schools from 1974 to 1991. He was then recruited to Birmingham to become one of the founding faculty in the new Russell Mathematics and Science Center at the Alabama School of Fine Arts. His program design led ASFA to be ranked as the #10 high school in the country on the US News and World Report list of the 100 Best High Schools in 2000.
In 1999, President Ann Reynolds recruited Mike to be interim dean of education at UAB and subsequently he was named dean. Since that time the School of Education has dramatically lifted its performance in urban education while maintaining its reputation for producing many of Alabama’s award winning educators.
March 28, 2008 12:45-1:55 PM
Venue: Room 6
Title: Thank you to teachers! Songs to Inspire You!
Presenters: David Roth
Audience: All
I have always loved educators. Educators saved my sanity at a time when I was young and vulnerable. Over the last twenty years I've written a lot of songs both about and used in educational settings. Think of this as a musical/spoken word “thank you” (with some creative problem-solving and different perspectives thrown in) to all of you who've devoted your lives to helping give people a better understanding of the world and of themselves. I'll keep singing my “easy-listening protest songs” until the day when teachers, not athletes or movie stars, get multiyear hundred-million dollar contracts...oh...you already have one? Would you kindly come see me after lunch?"
Session IV (March 28, 2:15-3:35 PM)
March 28, 2008 2:15-3:35 PM
Venue: Convention Hall
Title: Saving Our Students
Presenter: Professor Reuven Feuerstein
Audience: All
Conference Theme: Promoting High Intellectual Performance and Enrichment
The initiative undertaken by NUA in partnership with ICELP has, as its main goal, the creation of the conditions necessary for the development of cognitive processes and higher mental structures in children, youth and young adults in the African-American school population.
This intervention program is based on a firm belief, supported by strong scientific evidence, in the modifiability of this population. They are endowed with a high potential to be affected by appropriate learning modalities - particularly by the Mediated Learning Experience and by the applied systems derived from the theory of Structural Cognitive Modifiability. It is by meaningful and focused interventions of this kind that these children and adults will gain access to higher education and become contributing members of a technology-focused society.
The session will include a demonstration of how students are assessed and the immediate progress that came be shown in students when they are introduced to alternative methods of learning and thinking.
Reuven Feuerstein, a clinical psychologist who studied at the University of Geneva under Jean Piaget, Andre Rey, Barbel Inhelder, and Marguerite Loosli Uster, went on to earn his Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology at the Sorbonne. He is currently the director of the Center for Development of Human Potential in Jerusalem. From 1970 until the present Dr. Feuerstein has served as Professor in the School of Education at Bar Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel; he is also the Director of the Hadassah-Wizo-Canada Research Institute, in Jerusalem, Israel. His life’s work has been the development of the Theory of Structural Cognitive Modifiability and its emergent practices of dynamic assessment, active intervention, and placement of both children and adults in “shaping environments”. The concept of mediated learning experience, which he describes as the proximal determinant of differential cognitive development, is based on the assumption that a human development can be neither conceived of as a sole epiphenomenon of neurophysiological maturation nor considered as simply the product of the individual’s chance encounter with and direct exposure to stimuli and his active interaction with them. In addition to these determinants, it is by the flow of information transmitted to the individual by a process of mediation through channels produced by mediation itself that higher mental functions are developed. It is the mediation process itself that constructs both its content and structure. Implied by the concept of mediated learning experience is an intergenerational relationship determined by the strong need for ensuring continuity beyond the biological existence of the individual. While used at a number of schools in the United States, Professor Feuerstein’s work is very known and used in South America and Europe.
Session V (March 28, 4:05-5:15 PM)
March 28, 2008 4:05-5:15 PM
Venue: Convention Hall
Title: Beating the Odds: Minds on Instruction in Middle and High School Classroom
Presenter: Judith Langer
Audience: All
Conference Theme: Assessment, Language Development and Literacy
Judith Langer will call on her series of Beating the Odds and Partnership for Literacy studies in urban middle and high schools to discuss essential instructional features that need to be in place to foster both higher level thinking and higher achievement. In addition to describing the “Minds-on” classroom, she will bring it to life with examples of highly engaging and thought-provoking activities and their effects on students’ acquisition of higher literacy.
Judith Langer's studies of language, literacy, and learning have had a major impact on English and literacy theory, teaching, and assessment. For example, her research on comprehension has changed the way national and state tests assess students' literacy achievement and her studies of reading and writing have helped develop more thought-provoking instruction.
Her major works examine the nature of literate thought -- the knowledge students use when they "make sense" and the ways in which their learning is affected by activities and interactions in the classroom. Langer's research has led to the concept of comprehension as envisionment-building, where understandings are not additive, but in a continual state of reconstrual based on past, present and future experiences. It also has demonstrated that individuals (of all ages) read differently when reading literary vs. expository texts. She has also identified important ways in which effective literature instruction aids the development of student reading, writing, and thinking skills. And she has identified the professional and classroom features of English programs where students are "beating the odds" in literacy achievement.
March 28, 2008 4:05-5:15 PM
Venue: Swyer Theater (at the Egg)
Title: Research on Thinking Maps: A Transformational Language for Learning
Presenter: David Hyerle
Audience: All
Conference Theme: Promoting High Intellectual Performance and Enrichment
The session centers on the belief that it is the constellation of fundamental thought processes that is the universal dimension of humanness. Unfortunately, these cognitive processes are often implied within content teaching (especially within the present standards movement), thus students’ cognitive and critical thinking development evolves inconsistently and unmediated in schools. Thinking Maps is a meta-language of eight interdependent cognitive patterns based on foundational thinking skills--and frame semantics--that are taught explicitly to students across whole schools and at the college level. This unique language for learning is particularly useful for shifting under performing students’ content knowledge upwards while engaging their thinking capacities at a new level. This presentation pointedly challenges several debilitating myths about “thinking” while synthesizing twenty years of research and practice demonstrating students’ improved thinking, literacy and content learning through the self-differentiating use of Thinking Maps.
David Hyerle is the developer of the Thinking Maps model and author of the primary training resources for implementing Thinking Maps. Presently, he is the Director of Research and Development for Designs For Thinking and facilitating new applications of Thinking Maps in the field. He is a frequent keynote speaker, author of two A.S.C.D. books focused on visual tools, and developer of a new online course: Visual Tools for Literacy. He is also co-author with Larry Alper of the new leadership guide and training: Thinking Maps: Leading with a New Language.
March 28, 2008 4:05-5:15 PM
Venue: Clark Auditorium (Museum)
Title: Establishing 21st Century Secondary Schools: A Futuristic Framework
Presenter: Askia Davis
Audience: School Leadership; 9th to 12th grades
Conference Theme: Leadership Strategies for the 21st Century
This session will center on the issues to be considered in the “remaking” of secondary schools. It will focus on the values to be considered by decision-makers charged with the designing schools that will educate the children of the 21st century. Dr. Davis will consider the components of school design that recognize that “Excellence is a Moving Target.” He is a strong proponent that it takes more than down-sizing to create a place where excellence can be achieved.
March 28, 2008 4:05-5:15 p.m.
Venue: Room 1 (at the Convention Center)
Title: Literacy Learning Communities: Collaborative Leadership for the 21st Century
Presenter: ReLeah Lent
Conference Themes: Assessment, Language Development and Literacy; Promoting High Intellectual Performance and Enrichment; Creating Culturally Competent Classrooms
Literacy Learning Communities (LLCs), an adaptation of Professional Learning Communities, are built on a solid foundation of collaboration, dialogue, and trust. Come away from this session with a survey for assessing your school’s literacy culture and tools for creating a plan to meet the strengths and needs of all students
ReLeah Cossett Lent, author of Engaging Adolescent Learners and Literacy Learning Communities, spent several years at the University of Central Florida providing statewide literacy professional development. She is the recipient of PEN/Newman Own First Amendment Award for opposing censorship in schools as well as intellectual freedom awards from NCTE and ALA.
March 28, 2008 4:05-5:15 PM
Venue: Room 6 (Convention Center)
Title: Trust Initiative’s Principals’ Panel
Presenter: Mamie Merrifield NUA Mentor
Audience: All
Conference Theme: Leadership Strategies for the 21st Century
Successful urban principals share strategies and ideas. Need more information about student engagement and motivation; increasing levels of thinking and raising expectations; culturally responsive teaching and improved interactions in the classroom? Attend this session with principals from Birmingham City Schools.
NUA Director Mamie Merrifield will facilitate this session with a team of principals from Birmingham City Schools.
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