FEATURED SPEAKERS
Saturday March 29
Session I (March 29, 2008; 8:30-9:40 AM)
March 29, 2008 8:30-9:40 AM
Venue: Swyer Theater (at the Egg)
Title: The Literate Citizen
Presenters: Yvette Jackson, Donna Ogle, P. David Pearson
Audience: All
Conference Themes: Assessment, Language Development and Literacy, Educator Preparation
This panel, comprised of leading experts on urban literacy, will explore the issues of the universality of literacy in all races and cultures, strategies for multi-literacies and methods for overcoming the stereotypes that relate to the inabilities of some parts of society to become a literate citizens.
March 29, 2008 8:30-9:40 AM
Venue: Room 6 (at the Convention Center)
Title: Cognitive Pathways to Math
Presenter: Meir Ben-Hur
Audience: All
Conference Theme: Promoting High Intellectual Performance and Enrichment
Feuerstein’s Instrumental Enrichment (FIE) has been used in bridging FIE’s “learning how to learn” process into mathematics. Cognitive Pathways to Mathematics is a professional development program, which is modulated to address the range of grade levels and areas of school mathematics, including early mathematics, arithmetic (middle school level), algebra, geometry, and probability and statistics. It is designed to develop teachers’ knowledge of the fundamental mathematical ideas of the school curriculum, their understanding of the cognitive challenges that explain systematic students’ errors, and awareness of the best empirically established instructional strategies relative to the different strands of mathematics. This session will introduce the program, engage participants in activities that will demonstrate its nature, and present some of the available data on its successes.
Meir Ben-Hur completed his doctoral work on the relationship between spatial and mathematical abilities at Columbia University in New York. Since his first meeting with Reuven Feuerstein in 1974 that convinced him to devote his career to the Israeli psychologist’s ideas of mediating children’s learning and thinking abilities, Maier has continued to develop bridges between these ideas and mathematics education. In addition to serving as the senior international trainer for Feuerstein’s Institutes in Brazil, Holland and England, Meir has led the development of trainers in North America and the International Institutes, written several books and articles and trained teachers in urban and rural school districts across the United States.
March 29, 2008 8:30-9:40 AM
Venue: Clark Theater (at the Museum)
Title: Rebuilding Classrooms Around Conversations That Matter
Presenter: Arthur Applebee
Audience: All
Conference Theme: Promoting High Intellectual Performance and Enrichment
This presentation will discuss three components that are important in promoting high levels of achievement in challenging subject matter: 1) cognitive and intellectual engagement; 2) thoughtful interaction with others; and 3) a conception of curriculum that moves beyond the traditional dichotomies in curriculum and instruction.
Arthur N. Applebee’s (Ph.D., University of London) studies focus on how children and adults learn the many specialized forms of language required for success in school subjects, life, and work. In 1998, he received the David A. Russell Award for Distinguished Research in the Teaching of English from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) for his book Curriculum as Conversation: Transforming Traditions of Teaching and Learning, a reconceptualization of the role of curriculum in American schools and colleges. Applebee has also examined the development of story telling and story-telling skills among children. He has experience in program evaluation, high school teaching (English and drama) and clinical assessment and treatment of children with severe reading problems.
Applebee is professor of education at the University at Albany, State University of New York, and director of the federally sponsored National Research Center on English Learning & Achievement.
He is a long-time advisor to the National Assessment of Educational Progress and has coauthored some fourteen National Assessment reports on student achievement in American schools.
In addition to Curriculum as Conversation, his books include The Child’s Concept of Story: Ages Two to Seventeen; Literature in the Secondary School: Studies of Curriculum and Instruction in the United States; Writing in the Secondary School: English and the Content Areas; Contexts for Learning to Write: Studies of Secondary School Instruction and Tradition and reform in the Teaching of English: A History.
Session II (March 29, 2008; 10:00-11:30 AM)
March 29, 2008 10:00-11:30 AM
Venue: Convention Hall
Title: Teacher Development and How it Impacts School Redesign
Presenters: Linda Darling-Hammond
Audience: All
This keynote session will highlight Linda Darling-Hammond’s many years of research and expertise on what is appropriate teacher development and how this development of teachers is an integral part of the necessary school redesign that will guarantee equal opportunity for high intellectual performance for all of America’s children.
Linda Darling-Hammond is the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University, where she has launched the Stanford Educational Leadership Institute and the School Redesign Network. Professor Darling-Hammond has also served as faculty sponsor for the Stanford Teacher Education Program. Prior to Stanford, Darling-Hammond was William F. Russell Professor in the Foundations of Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. There, she was the founding Executive Director of the National Commission for Teaching and America's Future, the blue-ribbon panel whose 1996 report What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future, catalyzed major policy changes across the United States to improve the quality of teacher education and teaching. Her research, teaching, and policy work focus on issues of teaching quality, school reform, and educational equity. Among her more than 200 publications is The Right to Learn, recipient of the American Educational Research Association's Outstanding Book Award for 1998, and Teaching as the Learning Profession (co-edited with Gary Sykes), recipient of the National Staff Development Council's Outstanding Book Award for 2000.
Ticketed Luncheon
March 29, 2008 11:40 AM- 12:45 PM
Venue: Room 6 (Convention Center) Ticketed Luncheon
Presenter: Bryonn Bain
Audience: All
Named one of the 30 Visionaries Under 30 Who are Changing Your Future by UTNE Reader Magazine, Bryonn has been described by noted public intellectual Cornell West as, not only a poet who speaks his truths with a power we desperately need to hear, but also as one of the leading legal minds of his generation. Bain has lectured at over 50 colleges and correctional facilities nationwide, performed overseas in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and shared stages with Maceo Parker, the Last Poets, Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, DJ Red Alert, Poor Righteous Teachers, and dead prez.
In May 2000, an article Bryonn wrote about being racially profiled and wrongfully arrested was published as the cover story for the nation’s most widely-read progressive weekly–The Village Voice. Bain’s now famous essay, championed by his mentor and pioneering legal scholar Lani Gaunier, was entitled: Walking While Black: The Bill of Rights for Black America, and received over 100,000 replies from around the world– the largest response in the history of The Voice. Bryonn was subsequently interviewed on CBS’ 60 Minutes by Emmy award-winning journalist, Mike Wallace, a segment seen by over twenty million viewers.
During his first year at Harvard Law School, Bain was crowned Boston’s 1999 Slam Poetry Champion, and then went on to win the 2000 Grand Slam Poetry Championship at the world renowned Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe’. Bryonn’s poetry is featured on the album NYC Slams: 13 Hottest Poets in New York City. At only 25 years old, he became the youngest adjunct professor at New York University’s Gallatin School where he teaches The Spoken Word. He is featured in director Jane Han’s spoken word poetry documentary Urban Scribe, and stars in the independent film Hunting In America, written and directed by Sundance Film Festival finalist Kona Khasu. Bryonn has completed his long anticipated, forthcoming spoken word epic The Prophet Returns and joint album entitled Problem Child released in 2005.
Session III (March 29, 2008; 12:45-1:55 PM)
March 29, 2008 12:45-1:55 PM
Venue: Swyer Theater (at the Egg)
Title: Reversing Urban Students’ Underachievement: Nurturing High Intellectual Performance
Presenter: Yvette Jackson
Audience: All
Conference Theme: Assessment, Language Development and Literacy, Promoting High Intellectual Performance and Enrichment
This session will show how every student of color can achieve high intellectual performance when the right conditions are ensured. Educators attending this session will learn how to create these necessary conditions; experience from this highly interactive session how students can be motivated to engage in their own learning; and, find out how teachers working with the National Urban Alliance succeed in reversing underachievement when their lessons take into consideration how student culture and language affect cognition.
Yvette Jackson is internationally recognized for her work in assessing the learning potential of disenfranchised urban students. Her research is in literacy, gifted education and the cognitive mediation theory of Dr. Reuven Feuerstein. She has applied her research to develop an integrated process to motivate and elicit potential in underachievers. This research was the basis for her design of the New York City Gifted Programs Framework when she was the Director of Gifted Programs. As Executive Director of Instruction and Professional Development for the New York City Board of Education, she led the development and implementation of the Comprehensive Education Plan, which optimizes the delivery of all core curriculum and support services in the Public Schools of New York City. Dr. Jackson currently serves as the Chief Executive Officer of the National Urban Alliance, founded at The College Board and Teachers College, Columbia University. She works with school district administrators and teachers across the country to customize and deliver systemic approaches to literacy development through instructional practices that integrate culture, language and cognition to expand and accelerate student learning and achievement. She is a visiting lecturer at Harvard University, a member of ASCD’s Differentiated Instruction Cadre and a keynote presenter at national and international conferences. Dr. Jackson received a BA from Queens College of the City University of New York with a double major in Education and French. At Columbia University’s Teachers College, she was awarded an MA in Curriculum, an Ed.M. in Educational Administration, and a Doctorate in Educational Administration. Her session will show how every student of color can achieve high intellectual performance when the right conditions are ensured.
March 29, 2008 12:45-1:55 PM
Venue: Convention Hall
Title: Turning Around the Pedagogy of Purgatory Through An Enrichment Based Approach: Assessing And Developing the Gifts and Talents of All Students
Presenter: Joseph Renzulli
Audience: All
Conference Theme: Promoting High Intellectual Performance and Enrichment
Joseph Renzulli’s research has shown that an enrichment-based pedagogy can improve student achievement, engagement, and a commitment on the parts of young people to put forth maximum motivation to learn. Following a brief review of the strength-based assessment procedures for identifying talent potential in all students, this presentation will focus on a pedagogy of talent development that has largely been withheld from urban youth in favor of a “drill-and-kill” approach to learning. A practical and easy-to-use Internet based program will be demonstrated.
Joseph S. Renzulli is Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Connecticut, where he also serves as director of the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented. His research has focused on the identification and development of creativity and giftedness in young people and on organizational models and curricular strategies for total school improvement. A focus of his work has been on applying the strategies of gifted education to the improvement of learning for all students. He is a Fellow in the American Psychological Association and was a consultant to the White House Task Force on Education of the Gifted and Talented. He was recently designated a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor at the University of Connecticut.
March 29, 2008 12:45-2:45 PM
Venue: Clark Auditorium (Museum)
Title: The Language of Discipline and Achievement
Presenters: Jabari Mahiri
Audience: All
Conference Theme: Leadership and the Challenges of the 21st Century
Dr. Mahiri will argue that the achievement gap and the discipline gap can be seen as two sides of the same coin. To increase achievement teachers must understand the complex ways that school discipline considerations and practices are rendered through the language and culture of both students and teachers. This presentation uses video clips of actual school disciplining events in conjunction with the latest research findings on school discipline to increase understanding of the connections between discipline and achievement.
Dr. Mahiri holds a Ph.D. in English (Language, Literacy, and Rhetoric) from the University of Illinois at Chicago. His research is on the literacy learning of urban youth, particularly African American student, in schools and outside of them. His focus is on writing development and effective teaching and learning strategies in multicultural urban schools and communities. He is co-director of the Center for Urban Education and a principal investigator for the Diversity Project. He is also an Academy Instructor for the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC) and serves on the board of the Bay Area Coalition for Equitable Schools (BAYCES). He helped found and chaired the board of an alternative school in Chicago. He also taught English in Chicago public high schools for seven years. He is author of Shooting for Excellence: African American and Youth Culture in New Century Schools (1998), and editor of What They Don’t Learn in School: Literacy in the Lives of Urban Youth (2003). He also wrote a children’s book, The Day They Stole the Letter J.
March 29, 2008 12:45-1:55 PM
Venue: Hart Theater Lounge
Title: Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Speech-Language Assessments for African American Students
Presenter: Toya Wyatt
Audience: All
Conference Theme: Assessment, Language Development and Literacy
This presentation is designed to provide an overview of current approaches to culturally and linguistically appropriate speech-language assessments for African American students who are non-mainstream American English speakers with primary focus on a newly published speech-language test that is designed for accurately differentiating dialect from disorder in English child speakers, regardless of their dialect exposure background. Implications for minimizing the risk of inappropriate speech-language referrals will be discussed.
Dr. Toya Wyatt is an associate professor in the Communicative Disorders program at California State University, Fullerton. Dr. Wyatt's primary areas of teaching and research focus on the language development, assessment and delivery of services to young children from diverse cultural and language backgrounds with a primary focus on bilingual and African American children. She is the author of several publications focusing on multicultural child language development and assessment concerns and has given numerous presentations on these topics to professionals, researchers, and parents locally (in California) and nationally.
Dr. Wyatt has also served as the member of several boards and committees of the American Speech-Language Hearing Association (ASHA) and California Speech-Language-Hearing Association (CSHA). She is a fellow of both the California Speech-Language-Hearing and American Speech-Language Hearing Associations. She holds a B.S. and M.A. in Speech-Language Pathology from Northwestern University and a Ph.D. in Speech-Language Pathology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Session IV (March 29, 2:15-3:35 PM)
March 29, 2008 2:15-3:35 PM
Venue: Convention Hall
Title: Innovation in Mathematics Teaching and Learning in Large Urban Districts
Presenter: Uri Treisman
Audience: All
Conference Theme: Promoting High Intellectual Performance and Enrichment
Data from the National Center for Education Statistics show that there are vast differences in how effective various urban districts are in teaching mathematics to low-income and ethnic minority students. We will explore explanations for these differences as well as some new practices worthy of attention in some high-performing districts. We will pay special attention to new strategies for addressing the mathematics learning needs of English language learners, students with special needs, and students who are disengaged from school.
Uri Treisman is professor of mathematics and director of the Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas at Austin. For his work on nurturing minority student high achievement in mathematics, he was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1992. In December 1999, he was named as one of the outstanding leaders of higher education in the 20th century by the magazine Black Issues In Higher Education. Dr. Treisman is a founding board member of AVID and of the National Center for Public Policy in Higher Education. He chairs the Chancellor’s Advisory Board for Mathematics in NYC and the steering committee of the Urban Mathematics Leadership Network. In all his work, he is an advocate for equity and excellence in education for all children. The recently released results of the 2005 Trial Urban District Assessment show vast differences in the effectiveness of urban districts in teaching mathematics to low income and ethnic minority students.
March 29, 2008 2:15-3:35 PM
Venue: Swyer Theater (at the Egg)
Title: Effective Intervention for Struggling Readers and Writers: Making it Happen
Presenter: Dorothy Strickland
Audience: All
Conference Theme: Assessment, Language Development and Literacy
This session includes three areas of focus: (1) a critical overview of school and district-wide intervention policies and practices, such as reduced class size, preschool and family literacy programs, tutoring, and extended time models; (2) a discussion of policies and practices at the classroom level that make a difference; and; (3) a discussion of "responsible" test preparation as a professional development effort to improve student achievement.
Dorothy Strickland is the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Professor of education at Rutgers University. A former classroom teacher, reading consultant and learning disabilities specialist, she is a past president of both the International Reading Association and the IRA Reading Hall of Fame.
March 29, 2008 2:15-3:35 PM
Venue: Room 1 (at the Convention Center)
Title: Five Builders of Linguistic Intelligence
Presenter: Evelyn Rothstein
Audience: All
Conference Theme: Assessment, Language Development and Literacy
Linguistic intelligence blossoms when students become aware of the major aspects of the language they need to speak, read, and write skillfully and "with ease." By integrating 1) phonology, 2) morphology, 3) syntax, 4) semantics and 5) etymology, student have the tools for high intellectual, literate performance. STRATEGIES for achieving this integration of language will be the focus of this session.
Evelyn Rothstein has been a consultant with NUA for many years and has presented at numerous national conferences. She has her degree in Psycholinguistics from Teachers College and during her time with NUA has written three teachers books--Writing As Learning; Write for Mathematics, and English Grammar That Works, as well as articles and children's books.
March 29, 2008 2:15-3:35 PM
Venue: Room 3 (at the Convention Center)
Title: Leadership for Sustainable English Learner Success
Presenter: Francisca Sánchez
Audience: All
Conference Theme: Leadership and the Challenges of the 21st Century, Multilingual Education
This workshop will explore the leadership required to create systems that support English Learners' full success and sustain it over the long term. The presenter will provide a powerful systems-change framework with leadership structures and tools needed to respond appropriately to any EL issue that may arise.
Francisca Sánchez, Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum & Instruction with San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools, has served in a variety of leadership positions. In recognition of her continuing contributions to education, she was awarded a Presidential Excellence Medallion from CSU, San Bernardino in 2002 and named as 2002 Inland Empire Educator of the Year. She received the Association of California School Administrator’s 2005 State Valuing Diversity Award and the California Association for Bilingual Education’s 2006 Vision Award. She is currently chair of the Curriculum & Instruction Steering Committee’s Visual and Performing Arts Subcommittee.
Session V (March 29, 4:05-5:15 PM)
March 29, 2008 4:05-5:15 PM
Venue: Convention Hall
Title: Keynote Presentation
Presenter: Terrie Williams
Audience: All
Terrie Williams presentation will highlight her current work, a book entitled Black Pain: It Just Looks Like We’re Not Hurting, published by Scribner in January 2008 and will tell the untold story of depression among African-Americans as well as Terrie’s tale of her own chronic and crippling depression—a revealing narrative she shared in the June 2005 issue of ESSENCE magazine.
And she continues to work tirelessly to reach out to individuals who have suffered or are now suffering—from the struggling high school student, to the successful executive who puts forth the daily “mask”, to the gang member, the incarcerated and those who served time but were later proven innocent. Her drive to “save the world” leads her and the efforts of The Stay Strong Foundation to urge corporate and individual responsibility and to offer educational and leadership workshops, internships, and mentoring opportunities for youth.
Terrie is a clinical social worker by training who became successful public relations pro by her own design. Over the years she has also inscribed her prominence as an author of the successful business and inspirational story, and she has emerged as a passionate advocate for youth and those who battle depression.
But it must rightfully be noted that the accomplishments of The Terrie Williams Agency have always served as a catalyst for her other successful endeavors. Her public relations achievements — and that of the agency’s — have been featured as case studies in PR seminars, college texts, industry newsletters, and novels. Terrie’s triumphs have been chronicled in numerous publications such as Adweek, Jet Magazine, The Boston Globe, New York Daily News, Washington Post, Crain’s New York Business and People Magazine. She is a highly sought-after speaker and has shared her unique talent with many Fortune 500 companies and diverse organizations, from New York University to the National Hockey League.
She has also received countless honors and awards, including: The New York Women in Communications Matrix Award in Public Relations (she was the first woman of color to receive this award in its 70-year history); the PRSA New York Chapter’s Phillip Dorf Mentoring Award; and The Citizen’s Committee for New York Marietta Tree Award for Public Service. In 1996 she was the first person of color honored with the Vernon C. Schranz Distinguished Lectureship at Ball State University, and in 1998 she donated her papers to the Howard University Moorland-Springarn Research Center Archives.
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