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COURSES:

21st Century Technology for Educators

EDKU 9028 Using Digital Media to Enhance Learning 3 Credits

Digital media can provide highly engaging access to knowledge – particularly when students are the makers of that media. Research suggests that incorporating multimedia into instruction extends students’ critical and creative thinking skills and increases their motivation and self-esteem. Participants will learn strategies to empower their students to express themselves through digital media through such projects as creating slideshows, screen casts, audio, and video projects.

EDKU 9035 Using Web 2.0 in Teaching and Instruction 3 Credits

As presenters Bill Ferriter and Adam Garry say in the introduction to their book, the purpose of this course “is not to introduce you to new gadgets and gizmos. Instead, our goal is to help to find ways in which today’s tools can support the kinds of experiences that encourage students to learn.”
Thought-provoking, lively, and current, Bill Ferriter helps us see the world as our students see it. Through teacher workshops and middle-school classroom demonstrations, he provides practical suggestions for using new technology to teach “old-school” skills. Co-presenter Adam Garry provides the background information that weaves the course together.

EDKU 9636 Teaching, Learning, and Leading in the Digital Age 3 Credits

Raised on technology, students today thrive on media, both in and outside the classroom. In this course, teachers and administrators learn to engage and educate the millennial learner using still images, video and audio clips, assorted technological soft- and hardware, and Web 2.0 collaborative tools to augment instruction and assessment. Interventions for students with learning difference and struggling students will be highlighted and educators will investigate new projects and resources to replace textbook-driven instruction and to motivate and edify their "powered up" students.

EDKU 9756 Authentic Innovation in the 21st Century Classroom 3 Credits

Today's global high-tech world requires instruction and assessment that incorporate the latest social, learning, and neuroscience research on critical thinking, multi-tasking, multimodal learning, collaboration, and engagement. Educators will learn from classroom footage and lecture how to use technologically advanced tools that extend students' thinking by serving as a means to explore ideas, research questions, test hypotheses, compose thoughts, and come to conclusions. Educators will learn to teach their students to use these tools as vehicles for exploring rigorous academic concepts in authentic environments—i.e., in the world around them.

EDKU 9758 Technology Applications for Teaching and Supporting the Struggling Reader
        3 Credits

Over the past forty years, research in the cognitive and neurological sciences has helped us to better understand how the human brain is restructured during the process of learning to read. In this course, students learn how to leverage this knowledge to facilitate the use of technology to enhance literacy instruction for all readers, and especially struggling readers. The course offers specific examples of technology that teaches and supports literacy skills. The course is enhanced by screen shots, product walkthroughs, interviews, and footage of students at computers and in classrooms.

EDKU 9759 Understanding the Digital Generation: Teaching and Learning in the New
        Digital Landscape 3 Credits

Because of digital bombardment and the emergence of the new digital landscape, "digital natives" process information, interact, and communicate in fundamentally different ways than previous generations. Educators will revise their beliefs about what constitutes knowledge, critical thinking, and problem solving as they adapt their instruction and assessment to the requirements of the digitized 21st century, developing constructivist models that enable students to think, explore, and develop their own learning.

Classroom Management

EDCU 9027 Formative Assessment and Standards-Based Grading 3 Credits

Marzano Research Lab's expert presenters cofounder and CEO Dr. Robert J. Marzano and Vice President Dr. Tammy Heflebower walk course participants through the research and theories that support what kind of feedback, assessment, and grading students need to help them learn; how to construct those assessments; how to create rubric-based scales to inform both informative and summative assessments; and how to monitor and affect their students' progress.

EDCU 9030 Grading and Reporting for All Students 3 Credits

While educational objectives and strategies have changed dramatically over the last century, grading practices have not kept up. Many experts in the field and practitioners find that current systems result in grades that are inaccurate, unfair, and often meaningless in what they communicate to their audiences. This course will help educators assess their grading practices and make modifications based on standards-based grading that provides students, their parents, and their teachers with precise information about where the student is succeeding, where he or she is struggling, and what the teacher and students need to do differently to facilitate that students continued achievement. Expert presenters Thomas Guskey and Lee Ann Jung look closely at traditional systems like percentages and letter grades, averaging, and assigning zeros, which they argue fail students. They detail an Inclusive Grading Model that will enable educators to assess all of their students - including such exceptional students as students with learning disabilities, English Language Learners, and gifted students - in a manner that serves those whom they should serve most: the students themselves.

EDCU 9033 Grading: A Guide to Effective Practice 3 Credits

Grading has profound impact both on students' futures and on how and what they learn, and yet traditional grading is marred by undue influences and questionable practices. In this course, participants learn from workshop, classroom, and interview footage to assess their grading and feedback for accuracy, fairness, specificity and timeliness. They explore ways to improve their feedback to students during the learning process. Finally, they question some customary practices - including not distinguishing academic from behavioral issues, giving mathematically imprecise zeros, and grading the process rather than the product - and consider elegant and efficient alternatives to affect student engagement and achievement.

EDCU 9514 Effective Discipline: Anger Management, Part 1 3 Credits

The expression of anger at school can disrupt instruction, create a hostile environment, and make students and teachers feel unsafe. This course explores the relationship between anger, violence prevention, and effective discipline in schools. Participants study how to better manage and respond to anger—their own and others'—and thereby enrich their classrooms and schools, as well as learn to support calm brain states for students and to promote emotionally safe climates in which students' productivity can thrive.

EDCU 9515 Effective Discipline: Anger Management, Part 2 3 Credits

This course is designed to give participants control over anger—their own and their students—in order to manage their classrooms more effectively. Participants are introduced to current brain research that can help clarify neurological and bio-chemical responses to anger-evoking experiences and learn to deal with anger's related emotion, shame, and keep that emotion from interfering students' learning. Research clearly indicates that students learn better when classrooms are emotionally safe and provide clear and consistent guidelines.

EDCU 9633 Manage It All: Students, Curriculum, and Time 3 Credits

Effective teachers successfully navigate their students' often-unpredictable classroom behavior; they establish a classroom environment that facilitates learning; they differentiate instruction and assessment; they facilitate learning through cooperative groups; and they find time to meet their personal goals. Classroom management techniques and strategies are explained and the teacher learns how to set the tone and climate of the classroom. Designed for new and veteran teachers, this course provides timesaving strategies, practical tips, and great ideas for all teachers to create an effective learning environment for their students.

Educational Administration

EDAU 9002 Transforming School Culture 3 Credits

School improvement cannot happen in a toxic culture, one where teachers are in conflict and a negative attitude prevails. In this course, Dr. Anthony Muhammad sheds new light on the diverse issues of resistant staff, with an emphasis on developing a cohesive, positive culture. Dr. Muhammad provides the framework for understanding dynamic relationships within a school culture and ensuring a positive environment that supports the changes necessary to improve learning for all students.

EDAU 9512 Coaching: What Every Educator Needs to Know 3 Credits

This course provides a dynamic series of sessions that consider coaching in classrooms and schools as a process, a relationship, a specific set of skills, and a powerful strategy for creating change in people and organizations. Educators will learn specific skills that coaches need to successfully meet the challenges of educator-as-coach, a role essential to promoting positive personal and organizational change. Teachers, superintendents, and other educators role-play to model effective and appropriate coaching that will help participants improve their students' academic achievement and their own and their peers' professional development

EDAU 9632 Strategic Conversations for Instructional Leaders 3 Credits

Instructional leaders, team leaders, teacher mentors, educational coaches, and administrators will learn the delicate art of conversing about teaching to improve instruction. They will learn a new model of strategic conversations to help them quickly assess the primary needs of the teaching staff, strategically apply their leadership skills to motivate and support teachers, and help teachers make connections between their instructional techniques and student performance. The four conversational types—reflective, facilitative, coaching, and directive will help an educator's ability to make knowledge accessible to all students, meet instructional goals, and keep students motivated, engaged, and focused, leading to increased student success.

EDCU 9017 Assessment and Grading for Student Achievement 3 Credits

Expert educational consultants Damian Cooper and Ken O'Connor argue the necessity of rethinking assessment practices to help all students learn and to become more efficient. Participants will analyze their current practice and begin to implement improvements based on careful distinction between assessment for learning vs. assessment of learning. Interviews with teachers and classroom footage punctuate the presenters' key points throughout and provide examples of their theories in practice.

English Language Learning

EDEU 9007 Teaching Reading and Comprehension to English Language
        Learners, K-5 3 Credits

In this course, Dr. Margarita Calderon outlines techniques for elementary teachers seeing to improve the reading and comprehension skills of English Language Learners in their classrooms. With straightforwardness, patience, and humor, Dr. Calderon leads workshop participants through the steps needed to select vocabulary for reading, pre-teach this vocabulary, and model comprehension strategies like think-alouds and partner reading. Writing and editing strategies complete this picture.

EDEU 9454 Setting the Stage for Teaching ELL's Across the Curriculum
        (National Course) 3 Credits

In this course, educators learn the foundations of language development and language acquisition, setting the stage for developing instructional strategies that are more comprehensible for ELL students across all subject areas. Strategies are provided for assessing students' knowledge, identifying language learning objectives, and developing differentiated instructional practices that address the varying levels of language proficiency often present in a typical classroom. Additionally, the course covers research-based pedagogical practices that promote comprehension such as background building, frontloading vocabulary, using graphic organizers to enhance higher order thinking, leveraging the primary language to facilitate learning, using culturally responsive materials, and employing media, technology and other visual supports to enhance learning.

EDEU 9454 Setting the Stage for Teaching ELL's Across the Curriculum
        (California Course) Recommended for CTEL Prep 3 Credits

This course, offered specially for California educators, teaches the foundations of language development and language acquisition, setting the stage for developing instructional strategies that are more comprehensible for ELL students across all subject areas. Strategies are provided for assessing students' knowledge, identifying language learning objectives, and developing differentiated instructional practices that address the varying levels of language proficiency often present in a typical classroom. Additionally, the course covers research-based pedagogical practices that promote comprehension such as background building, frontloading vocabulary, using graphic organizers to enhance higher order thinking, leveraging the primary language to facilitate learning, using culturally responsive materials, and employing media, technology and other visual supports to enhance learning.

EDEU 9453 Teaching ELL's Across the Curriculum: ESL, Sheltered, and Culturally
         Responsive Instruction (National Course) 3 Credits

This course puts theory into practice by reviewing Cummins' theory of task difficulty (Cummins' Quadrants). Participants observe several classrooms where English language learners are engaged in content-based ESL lessons and they are given examples of the key sheltered instruction strategies and taught how to plan for and address task difficulty through sheltered instruction techniques. The course addresses instructional strategies using assessments for analyzing data, setting goals, differentiating instruction, and monitoring instruction. Through demonstrations, classroom observations, anecdotal examples, and interviews with students and educators, participants learn to apply ELL strategies to their own classrooms in all four domains of language: reading, writing, speaking, and listening.

EDEU 9453 Teaching ELL's Across the Curriculum: ESL, SDAIE, and Culturally
         Responsive Instruction (California Course) 3 Credits

Focusing on the needs of CA teachers, this course puts theory into practice by reviewing Cummins' theory of task difficulty (Cummins' Quadrants). Participants observe several classrooms where English language learners are engaged in content-based ESL lessons and they are given examples of the key sheltered instruction strategies and taught how to plan for and address task difficulty through sheltered instruction techniques. The course addresses instructional strategies using assessments for analyzing data, setting goals, differentiating instruction, and monitoring instruction. Through demonstrations, classroom observations, anecdotal examples, and interviews with students and educators, participants learn to apply ELL strategies to their own classrooms in all four domains of language: reading, writing, speaking, and listening.

Instructional/Curriculum

EDRU 9510 Character Education, Part 1: Community and Cultural Change 3 Credits

Cultural changes in family structure, parents' shifting role, and the glorification of violence, drugs, and gang activity in popular culture have all contributed to changes in behavior dynamics that impact students' ability to learn. Educators will discover avenues to create a moral community in the classroom and identify their roles in the process of fostering students' positive character traits. They will focus on building adult teams to implement and sustain a character focus.

EDRU 9511 Character Education, Part 2: Positive Role Models and Proactive Educators
        3 Credits

This course assists educators in creating an environment conducive to learning by encouraging students to take personal responsibility for their actions and by creating a positive climate for resolving conflicts. Educators will develop a school-wide character education program that leverages community involvement from businesses, faith communities, parents, and coaches. They will explore their roles as leaders and "ignite" leadership at all levels to create positive and productive relationships.

EDRU 9779 Data-Driven Decision Making: Implementing Strategies for Student
        Achievement 3 Credits

Educators learn how to make data-driven decisions using classroom data to inform their instructional practice. By capturing and analyzing student data in the form of graphs, charts, and diagrams, educators learn to adapt and focus their instructional strategies to achieve greater student academic achievement. Educators also learn how students can achieve more success in less time.

EDRU 9637 Differentiation and Assessment for Middle School 3 Credits

Educators learn to create instruction and assessment to discover and meet their students' different needs. They will use assessments to communicate rather than to compensate or reward; they will scrutinize grading systems to identify unfairly norm-referenced or biased ones; and they will convert assessments to nonjudgmental, criteria-referenced systems instead. This course prepares educators to manage the differentiated classroom by offering their students nurturing, rigorous, fair, and differentiated instruction that promotes student engagement and academic success.

EDRU 9606 Discovery-Based Mathematics, Part 1 3 Credits

In Part 1 of this course, educators will learn easy-to-implement, sequenced activities that promote conceptual understanding and relate concrete understanding to symbolic interpretation. They will learn techniques to assess students' understanding of skills and concepts so that lessons can be appropriately adjusted. Educators will embrace activities that promote pattern recognition and descriptions with respect to operational procedures including real, negative, and whole numbers.

EDRU 9605 Discovery-Based Mathematics, Part 2 3 Credits

Educators will learn easy-to-implement, sequenced activities that promote conceptual understanding and relate concrete understanding to symbolic interpretation. They will learn techniques to assess students' understanding of skills and concepts so that lessons can be appropriately adjusted. Educators will embrace learning activities that promote pattern recognition and descriptions with respect to operational procedures involving multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction.

EDRU 9573 Motivating Underachievers Using RTI and Differentiated Instruction
        3 Credits

Educators will identify prototypical causes of underachievement, who their underachievers are, and what research-based interventions will help to reverse patterns of underachievement. Through RTI and differentiated instruction, educators will become flexible planners who supply their students with choices and frequently monitor their students' progress. Compacting, scaffolding, and tiering strategies will help educators accommodate a range of learning needs.

EDRU 9635 How to Integrate Art into Every Day Learning 3 Credits

Bringing art into the general classroom can make students better observers, thinkers, and doers in all their subjects. This courses helps educators discover routes to access art—through reproductions, the Internet, and museums—and for various purposes—to introduce diverse cultures and points-of-view; to enhance language arts, social studies, and math curricula; to animate the past and present; and to instigate creative writing and art-making.

Language Arts/ Reading/Writing/Literacy

EDLU 9027 Elementary Reading Intervention Strategies 3 Credits

Proactive reading instruction - in everything from phonics to comprehension - is required both to prevent problems with and to promote authentic literacy. This course offers elementary educators a research-based menu of reading intervention strategies that prepare educators to intervene immediately and effectively at the first signs of students' struggles. This course equips educators with routines and activities that will make confident, able readers of all their students.

Special Needs/Gifted Instruction

EDNU 9044 Aiding Students with Learning Disabilities 3 Credits

In this course Dr. Donna WAlker Tileston covers a broad range of topics in the worlds of brain research and special education. Because she ends every unit with a hands-on practitioner’s approach to improving classroom strategies, the brain research is an introduction and provides vital background to a classroom teacher who is working to enlarge his or her toolbox for working with students with special needs. Many of the ideas and classroom strategies, however, apply equally to the regular education teacher and classroom.
After presenting a brief history of special education, Dr. Tileston introduces and explains the key legislation that has changed the lives of people with special needs. She discusses the services schools are required to provide and makes suggestions for what schools can do to best implement the standards set in federal and state laws. Dr Tileston then focuses on three systems of thinking and the roles they play in learning. She then draws a distinction between declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge, definitions that are used throughout her presentation. She offers many examples of mental models that students may learn to construct in order to increase their ability to recall and organize pieces of information.
Shifting gears to emotional and behavioral disorders, as well as attention disorders and solutions, Dr. Tileston looks first at the brain’s involvement in emotions, behavior, and attention disorders. For all of the disabilities she explores, Dr. Tileston recommends a variety of tactics to better engage students, including providing much structure, such as scaffolding in curriculum and behavioral expectations; consistency in every aspect of classroom life; and constant positive and specific feedback. Ultimately, this course’s goal is to ensure that all students receive a high quality education and become independent and empowered in their learning.

EDNU 9437 Aiding Students with Learning Disabilities 3 Credits

This course distills best practices for an authentically diverse, brain-based learning environment. Educators will learn to access such systems as the metacognitive and self-systems to help students toward automaticity. Educators will discover methods to assist their students with reading disorders, emotional and behavior disorders, attention disorders, and autism.

EDNU 9447 Challenging Gifted Students Using the SCG Model-Part 1 3 Credits

The School-wide Cluster Gifted Model provides full-time gifted services without major budget implications, and implementing these strategies has the potential to raise achievement for all students. With the SCGM, all students are purposely placed into classrooms based on their abilities and potential. Educators will learn to identify gifted students, how to implement the SCGM in the classroom, and the training necessary to become an SCGM teacher.

EDNU 9448 Challenging Gifted Students Using the SCG Model-Part 2 3 Credits

This second course in the School-wide Cluster Grouping Model covers additional teaching strategies as well as training tips for specialists and mentors, how to conduct relevant meetings for teachers, and how to monitor progress in the SCGM. Educators will learn to create a database to track gifted students' growth, and will learn routes to professional development and curriculum differentiation to address the needs of special population students.

Teaching Methodology

EDDU 9032 Pyramid Response to Intervention 3 Credits

Students who don't get the education they need run higher risks not only of dropping out of school, but of incarceration, homelessness, and early death. Pyramid response to intervention (PRTI) seeks to remedy that situation - and has met with remarkable success - by systematically identifying students' needs, providing targeted interventions, monitoring students' progress, modifying interventions as necessary, and thereby enabling all of a school's or district's students to learn at high levels. The presenters emphasize the role of collaborative teamwork and instruct participants on how to make their meetings purposeful and effective.

EDDU 9033 Motivating and Engaging Students 3 Credits

In this course, educators will learn to create classroom environments in which engagement is the norm. Interviews with teachers and students, classroom footage, workshop activities, lecture, and the accompanying eBook bring to life this critical subject for the educator who aspires to engage all of his or her students in all of their learning.

EDDU 9039 Understanding Culture and Race 3 Credits

In Understanding Culture and Race, participants study the building blocks of culture and why cultural differences can obstruct effective interactions between students and teachers. This course provides a framework that participants can use to pursue their learning about culture, behaviors, and expectations in their classrooms and school environments. Participants will also increase their capacity to develop their students' awareness of these issues and their skills at negotiating them.

EDDU 9054 Challenging Gifted and All Students with the Cluster Grouping Model 3 Credits

Gifted students and struggling learners have much in common. Both ends of the academic bell curve deserve to have their special learning needs met. Attending to the needs to gifted students through the Schoolwide Cluster Grouping Model (SCGM) techniques in the classroom - at all grade levels - can provide challenging curriculum options for advanced learners, lead to improved classroom behavior, and perhaps surprisingly, raise the performance of all students
Susan Winebrenner and Dina Brulles introduce course participants to a variety of teaching strategies, classroom management techniques, alternative assignments including extension menus, and differentiated instructional options that help teachers meet the needs of their gifted students in the heterogeneous classroom. Participants also view classroom segments of teachers utilizing essential components of the Schoolwide Cluster Grouping Model. The presenters cover placement of all students, emotional issues, teacher support issues, relevant research, and how to communicate with all stakeholders.
Winebrenner and Dulles take viewers step-by-step through the process of beginning the SCGM using a two to three year plan for initial implementation. They also review aspects of flexible groupings, curriculum differentiation, and monitoring progress so that all students have the opportunity to experience continuous growth.

EDDU 9055 Assessment and the Common Core State Standards 3 Credits

In this practical course, Dr. Kay Burke shows how to create and use assessment tools that improve instruction (formative assessments) as well as gauge its success (summative assessments), and how to arrive at an effective balance of the two. Dr. Burke demonstrates how to plan instruction as part of a collaborative team, repacking the Common Core standards and sharing meaningful instructional objectives with students. She provides examples of performance tasks that will motivate students in every grade. Teachers taking this course will get a first-hand look at checklists, rubrics, and informal assessments in use in actual classrooms-- from second-graders studying shapes to high-school juniors investigating global human rights abuses. Educators will come away with tools and strategies that they can use immediately, making balanced assessment an integral part of their own instruction.

EDDU 9057 Becoming A Reflective Teacher 3 Credits

In this course, Dr. Robert J Marzano, CEO of the Marzano Research Lab, posits teaching as a collection of skills that benefit from practice and reflection. He assists participants in developing those skills by reflecting on their personal strengths and weaknesses in relation to nine critical design questions, setting growth goals, engaging in focused practice to meet those goals, and soliciting feedback from students and colleagues. Participants will learn from a workshop setting, classroom footage, interviews, and models of reflection-in-process how to use synthetic reflecting to improve their practice in order to affect student achievement.

EDDU 9059 Common Core State Standards in Mathematics, Grades 3 - 8 3 Credits

In this timely and practical course, Dr. Tim Kanold and Dr. Diane Briars explore what every educator needs to know to fully embrace the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in Mathematics. The presenters' approach is both motivational and down-to-earth; they explain both the "whys" and the "how-to's" for implementing the Common Core. This course includes strategies for teaching for understanding, tools for planning lessons and evaluating assessments, and classroom-ready tasks that will allow teachers to put theory into practice. This course is the perfect guide for Professional learning communities seeking to improve their mathematics programs.

EDDU 9066 Differentiation and the Brain 3 Credits

Research is revealing so much about how the brain learns that educators can no longer ignore the implications of these discoveries for educational practice. Teachers need to find ways to use this brain research to develop strategies that will allow students to succeed in classrooms with a diverse mix of student readiness, interest, and learning profile. This course, led by expert presenters Carol Ann Tomlinson and David A. Sousa, offers a model for teachers for setting up a differentiated and brain-friendly classroom. Through workshop and classroom footage and interviews with practitioners, participants will explore how teachers' and students' mindsets affect differentiation and learn how to develop learning environments most conducive to differentiation. They will student the major components of a brain-friendly quality curriculum; explore effective practices for assessing student achievement to inform instruction; learn how to respond to student readiness, interests, and learning profiles; and investigate effective management techniques for the differentiated classroom.

EDDU 9089 Best Practices for Teaching African American Boys 3 Credits

According to the most recent statistics, the dropout rate for African American males in US schools is over 50%. Dr. Jawanza Kunfuju links this trend with the disproportionate placement of these students in special education classes, a dearth of African American male teachers, and a failure to teach to African American boys’ learning styles. In Best Practices for Teaching African American Boys, Dr. Kunjufu prepares educators to implement solutions to these problems in their classrooms and schools. He offers strategies for preventing the referral of students to special education that include constructing Afro-centric classrooms, integrating black male role models, supporting students’ transitions through school and boyhood, accommodating these students’ needs for curriculum that appeals to their interests and other characteristics, and designing instruction that exploits the best of their energy and intelligence. The course is punctuated by workshop discussions and classroom footage that illustrate the complexity of and solutions to the issues at hand, so that African American boys have the same opportunities for success as all of their peers.

EDDU 9634 A Framework for Teaching, Charlotte Danielson 3 Credits

Enhancing Professional Practice: A Framework for Teaching, defines teachers' responsibilities, which falls into four domains: planning and preparation, classroom environment, instruction, and professional responsibilities. Through lectures, classroom observations, and panel discussions, educators work through how to use the Framework to scrutinize and strengthen classroom teaching practices to improve student learning. Participants are asked to consider their experiences before and after they hear the panel members describe theirs, then assess their practice through Danielson's detailed levels of performance and through the ongoing task of self-reflection.