Comprehension Going Forward: Where We Are and What's Next
Ellin is author of Talk About Understanding: Rethinking Classroom Talk to Enhance Understanding, To Understand: New Horizons in Reading Comprehension, co-author of Comprehension Going Forward and of Mosaic of Thought: The Power of Comprehension Strategy Instruction, 2nd edition as well as numerous chapters for professional books and journals on the teaching of reading as well as education policy journals. Ellin Oliver Keene has been a classroom teacher, staff developer, non-profit director and adjunct professor of reading and writing. For sixteen years she directed staff development initiatives at the Denver-based Public Education & Business Coalition. She served as Deputy Director and Director of Literacy and Staff Development for the Cornerstone Project at the University of Pennsylvania for 4 years. Ellin currently serves as Director of Research and Development for the PEBC, as senior advisor to Heinemann Professional Development and works with schools and districts throughout the country and abroad. Ellin Oliver Keene is a Heinemann Professional Development provider. She presents Heinemann One-Day Workshops, Live Webinars, and all forms of On-Site PD. She is most sought after for her long-term professional development residencies in partnership with Heinemann Professional Development. For an overview of the Keene Residency »An internationally-known speaker, workshop leader, and consultant, Susan Zimmermann is coauthor of educational bestsellers Mosaic of Thought (1997 and 2007 2nd edition), 7 Keys to Comprehension, and Comprehension Going Forward (2011), books that are changing the way reading is taught in classrooms throughout America. She cofounded and served as the Executive Director of the Denver-based Public Education and Business Coalition, an organization that has spearheaded ground-breaking comprehension work. During her time there, she initiated numerous programs to improve the quality of public schools, including the Reading Project, which provides many of the examples in Mosaic of Thought and 7 Keys. Susan is also the author of Keeping Katherine; Writing to Heal the Soul, winner of the Colorado Book Award; and Grief Dancers, finalist for the Colorado Book Award and winner of the Exceptional Parent symbol of excellence for its "profound contribution to human understanding and dignity." These wise and inspiring books grew out of Susan's personal experience raising her profoundly handicapped daughter Katherine who had Rett syndrome. Currently a full-time speaker, writer, and education consultant, Susan has given hundreds of workshops, keynotes, and summer institutes in nearly every state and throughout Canada. She has worked with international schools in Mexico, the Philippines, Romania, Japan, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Visit her Heinemann Speakers page for more information. A lover of the wilderness and believer in the transformative power of the outdoors, she has been a trustee of the Colorado Outward Bound School and served as the board chair of The Women's Wilderness Institute, an organization that provides wilderness learning experiences for adolescent girls and women. Susan is a graduate of Yale Law School and mother of four. She lives in the foothills west of Denver. For more information on Susan Zimmermann visit her Web site at www.susanzimmermann.com.Debbie Miller is coauthor of three Heinemann resources: "Kids with Grit," a course on the Heinemann Digital Campus; No More Independent Reading Without Support, part of the Not This But That series; and Comprehension Going Forward. Debbie taught and learned from children in the Denver Public Schools for thirty years and worked for many years with the Denver-based Public Education and Business Coalition (PEBC), a nonprofit group committed to providing ongoing support and leadership for schools in the Denver area and nationally. She has also been an adjunct professor at The University of Denver and Regis University. The beloved author of Teaching with Intention; Reading with Meaning; and multiple videos, including Happy Reading!, The Joy of Conferring, and Literacy Attendance, Debbie now presents workshops and works extensively with schools and districts on long-range planning and development of literacy programs.Samantha Bennett is the author or coauthor of four Heinemann resources: "Kids with Grit" and "Adolescent Reading RX," courses on the Heinemann Digital Campus; Comprehension Going Forward; and That Workshop Book. Sam is the former instructional coach at the Rocky Mountain School of Expeditionary Learning. Previously she was a staff developer with the Denver-based Public Education and Business Coalition, a middle school social studies teacher, a curriculum-technology integration specialist, a district literacy specialist, an adjunct professor at the University of Colorado at Denver, and lab-facilitator for Cris Tovani. She works closely with teachers at her school and across the country to help them tap into the energy to teach and learn. Sam is branching into systems-level work and helping districts set up a variety of coaching and professional development structures to support teachers, including the Lab Model pioneered by the PEBC. Sam is currently researching and writing about giving students access to power in the world through the creation of meaningful work in school. She gets her energy from her husband Maurice and their three sons - Charlie, Theo, and Augie.A Colorado teacher for more than 25 years, Leslie Blauman's classroom is a model site for staff development in reading, writing, and thinking through the Denver-based Public Education and Business Coalition (PEBC). She is a state and national literacy consultant; has presented at IRA, NCTE, and CCIRA. Leslie is coauthor of the Heinemann title Comprehension Going Forward and the author of Kid-Tested Writing Lessons for Grades 3-6 and The Inside Guide to the Reading-Writing Classroom, Grades 3-6.Chryse Hutchins is a consultant working with educators across the country, speaking at conferences, providing reading and writing demonstration lessons, facilitating school-wide comprehension implementation plans, and presenting at parent nights. She enjoys her role as teacher coach and cheerleader, often successfully nagging outstanding teachers to write about their extraordinary instructional practices. Chryse has been a classroom teacher, a staff developer with the Denver-based Public Education and Business Coalition, and an adjunct professor of literacy at the University of Denver. She treasures moments spent reading with her granddaughter, Lila, as they together bring to life the strategies outlined in her co-authored book, 7 Keys to Comprehension: How to Help Your Kids Read It and Get It!Stephanie Harvey has spent her career teaching and learning about reading and writing. An elementary and special ed teacher for fifteen years, she now works as a staff developer and educational consultant. Insatiably curious about student thinking, she is a teacher first and foremost and continues to work in schools on a regular basis savoring any time spent with kids. The coauthor of the Heinemann titles Comprehension Going Forward and Comprehension & Collaboration as well as the author of Nonfiction Matters and Strategies That Work, the latter coauthored by Anne Goudvis, Stephanie works with educators, schools and districts to implement progressive literacy practices. She has created a number of video series that showcase thoughtful literacy practice. Her most classroom materials with firstHand include The Comprehension Toolkit, the Primary Comprehension Toolkit, and Comprehension Interventions. Created along with Anne Goudvis, they form an intensive resource for comprehension instruction and active literacy across the day and throughout the year. » Listen to an interview with Stephanie Harvey on Education Talk Radio - 2/29/2012 (30:35)Anne Goudvis is the coauthor the Heinemann title Comprehension Going Forward and of Strategies that Work (with Stephanie Harvey). She and Steph also created best-selling classroom materials through firstHand: The Comprehension Toolkit; The Primary Comprehension Toolkit; and Comprehension Interventions. Anne has been a classroom teacher, staff developer, and university instructor. For the past fifteen years she has worked as a staff developer with the Denver-based Public Education and Business Coalition and currently does staff development in schools around the country. Recent interests include working in schools with culturally and linguistically diverse students and integrating reading comprehension instruction with content area topics in social studies and science.Brad Buhrow is coauthor of the Heinemann title Comprehension Going Forward. For the past twelve years he has worked with culturally and linguistically diverse learners teaching fourth, second, and first grade. He believes that "to be a teacher it takes thinking, imagination, creativity, curiosity and a lot of energy. That's why I became a teacher - I love that challenge. I've learned from critical theory that establishing a solid knowledge base and being conscious of my practices is the first step toward action and positive change." Brad is also coauthor of Ladybugs, Tornadoes and Swirling Galaxies and was a teacher participant in the professional development videos included in Reading The World and The Primary Toolkit.Gina Cervetti is a coauthor of the Heinemann title Comprehension Going Forward. An assistant professor of Curriculum and Instruction at University of Colorado Boulder, she teaches graduate-level courses on reading instruction and assessment. The focus of Gina's work over the last decade has been on students' development of academic literacies with a particular focus on reading comprehension - and, more recently, talk - in science. In particular, she has been exploring the question, How can literacy instruction be made more authentic, powerful, knowledge-enriching, and personally meaningful through integration with content-area instruction? Gina completed studies of integrated science-literacy instruction as a context for language development and science learning for English language learners and of how middle school students learned to engage in sense-making science conversations in a summer science and reading program. Before joining the faculty at CU Boulder, Gina was a curriculum developer and researcher for the Seeds of Science/Roots of Reading program at the University of California, Berkeley.Marjorie Larner is coauthor of Comprehension Going Forward and author of Pathways. While continuing to work with educators across the country in literacy and developing collaborative learning communities, Majorie has worked regularly over time locally at a 6 - 12 school, the Denver Center for International Studies, through the Asia Society's International Studies School Network. She also serves as Adjunct Faculty and Site Professor for University of Colorado Denver Urban Teacher Education Program. A former teacher, administrator, and staff developer with the Denver-based Public Education and Business Coallition, Marjorie's thinking and writing about how to support professional learning continues to evolve, particularly as we navigate the increasing challenges of the current educational culture. As a consultant, she enjoys being embedded in a school's culture where she can offer challenge and support in conversations and observations that happen naturally in the course of a regular school day.Cris Tovani and Samantha Bennett have collaborated to create online professional development at Heinemann's Digital Campus. Their Course Adolescent Reading RX shows a variety of ways to reach reluctant and struggling readers. Cris is also coauthor of the Heinemann title Comprehension Going Forward. The author of I Read It, but I Don't Get It, Cris sums up her teaching life in one simple sentence: "How lucky I am to be a teacher!" She splits her weeks between teaching and coaching in very different schools. Half is spent teaching at the most diverse secondary school in Colorado, where "on any given day, I can hear 41 different languages spoken in the hall." The other half she spends coaching in several middle and high schools, where her first charge is "to figure out why advanced students in upwardly mobile neighborhoods aren't meeting their targeted areas of growth.Nancy Commins is coauthor of the Heinemann title Comprehension Going Forward. Nancy has worked with linguistically diverse students in a variety of capacities over the past three decades. She was a classroom teacher in both ESOL and bilingual programs in Rochester, New York and Boulder, Colorado. For seven years she was a professor in the School of Education at the University of Colorado at Denver in the Language Literacy and Culture program area. She helped to start and directed a bilingual program at Casey Middle School in Boulder and went on to become the Director of Literacy and Language Support Services in the Boulder Valley School District where she oversaw the ESL, Bilingual, Title I, and Early Childhood programs for four years. She is coauthor of two books: Linguistic Diversity and Teaching and Restructuring Schools for Linguistic Diversity as well as the editor of the Immigrant Integration Educator Resource Guide in 2007, a co-sponsored project of the Colorado Department of Education and the Colorado Trust. For the past ten years Dr. Commins has worked as an independent consultant assisting schools and districts in their efforts to improve instruction for language minority students. Currently she is a Senior Instructor in the Linguistically Diverse Education Program in the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Colorado at Denver.Anne Upczak Garcia is coauthor of the Heinemann title Comprehension Going Forward. The coauthor of Ladybugs, Tornadoes, and Swrinling Galazies, Anne is a biliteracy teacher at Columbine Elementary in Boulder, Colorado, where she has taught on a first/second grade looping team for the last decade. Anne has her Master's Degree from the University of Colorado in Multicultural/Bilingual/ESL Education and holds an endorsement in Bilingual Education.The smash-hit Comprehension Connections introduced teachers across the country to the imaginative, inspiring, and practical teaching of Tanny McGregor. Now Genre Connections brings to teaching genre the same creativity and can-do spirit that has helped hundreds of thousands of practitioners improve. Tanny has been teaching and learning in Cincinnati for more than two decades. She is a staff developer, a nationally-known keynoter and workshop presenter, and a member of Heinemann Professional Development Services. In addition to Comprehension Connections and Genre Connections, she is a coauthor of the Heinemann title Comprehension Going Forward. Tanny online Tanny's voice jumps off the page. If you'd like to hear that voice in person, then listen to her appearance on Education Talk Radio.P. David Pearson is coauthor of the Heinemann titles Comprehension Going Forward and What Every Teacher Should Need Know About Reading Comprehension Instruction. He has served President of the National Reading Conference (NRC), Director of the Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement, and on the boards of directors for the International Reading Association, NRC, and Association of American Colleges of Teacher Education. He is the author of dozens of influential books and peer-reviewed articles, the founding editor of the Handbook of Reading Research, as well as a former editor of Reading Research Quarterly and the Review of Research in Education. His many awards include the 1989 Oscar Causey Award (NRC) for contributions to reading research, the 1990 William S. Gray Citation of Merit (IRA) for contributions to reading research and practice, the 2005 Albert J. Harris Award (IRA) for the year's best reading-disability publication, and the 2003 Alan Purves Award (NCTE) for a publication impacting practice. In 2006 the University of Minnesota honored him with the Alumni Outstanding Achievement Award, and in 2010 AERA gave him Distinguished Contributions to Research in Education Award.Harvey "Smokey" Daniels has been a city and suburban classroom teacher and a college professor, and now works as a national consultant and author on literacy education. In language arts, Smokey is known for his pioneering work on student book clubs, as recounted in Literature Circles: Voice and Choice in Book Clubs and Reading Groups, and Minilessons for Literature Circles. His latest bestselling books on content-area literacy are Subjects Matter, Second Edition; Texts and Lessons for Teaching Literature; Texts and Lessons for Content-Area Reading; Comprehension & Collaboration; and Content-Area Writing. He is also coauthor of Best Practice, Fourth Edition and The Best Practice Video Companion as well as editor of Comprehension Going Forward. Smokey works with elementary and secondary teachers throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe, offering demonstration lessons, workshops, and consulting, with a special focus on creating, sustaining, and renewing student-centered inquiries and discussions of all kinds. Smokey shows colleagues how to simultaneously build students' reading strategies, balance their reading diets, and strengthen the social skills they need to become genuine lifelong readers. Connect with Smokey @smokeylit.