Add RTI to Your Educational Alphabet Soup
Terry Metzger, Principal, Marengo Ranch Elementary, CA

This session will discuss the basics of Response to Intervention (RTI) legislation, goals, and models, as well as possible steps for implementation of an RTI model at the school level. A focus on blending Student Success Teams (SST), Coordination of Services Team (COST), and RTI will help participants effectively provide services to at-risk students.

Strand: Best Practices
Grade Level: K-6

When Consequences Don't Work: Succeeding with Difficult Students
Grace Dearborn, Educational Consultant, Conscious Teaching, LLC, CA

Consequences are often a last resort that don't resort to much! What are the keys to developing and implementing invisible but powerful classroom management skills? In this lively, interactive session for K–12 staff developers and teachers, receive dozens of practical, immediately implementable strategies for managing difficult students effectively, focusing on both prevention and intervention. Learn individual and whole-class approaches that will help get difficult students to become class allies, rather than class disruptions. NOTE: Strategies shared in this session will be different from those shared in the companion session titled, “Conscious Classroom Management: Bringing Out the Best in Students and Teachers.”

Strand: Engaging At-Risk Students
Grade Level: K-12

My People Are . . .Youth Pride in Mixed Heritage
Tarah Fleming, Co-Director, Multiethnic Education Program, CA

This workshop uses the 20-minute film, “My People Are . . . Youth Pride in Mixed Heritage,” which features young performers sharing their pride in culture, history, and ethnic roots through theater, spoken word, interview, dance, rap, and song. The Action Booklet that accompanies the film features interactive activities that explore the issues raised in the film.

Strand: Family and Community
Grade Level: K–12

Freeze on Program Improvement: Maxwell Elementary School
Mary Gonzales, Principal, Maxwell Elementary, CA; Dr. Frank Rodriguez, Consultant, TESS Consulting Group, CA

Maxwell Elementary has made tremendous growth over the last five years (200+ API points) by undertaking a very structured reform effort, similar in nature to the California Department of Education's process for providing assistance to schools. Participants will hear from administration and teachers how cultural and program changes enabled the staff to begin work on curriculum and instruction that directly affected positive student achievement.

“How does a school accept and work effectively with an external support provider?” This is one of the key questions answered by Dr. Frank Rodriguez from TESS Consulting Group. In addition, participants will receive sample copies of the work the Maxwell staff has done in the areas of quality instruction and curriculum alignment to state content standards.

Maxwell teachers will describe the process by which the school has made continuous improvement an institutionalized effort, including data analysis, grade level collaborations, curriculum mapping, and focused walkthroughs.

Strand: NEW!; Increasing Academic Achievement; VetORC
Grade Level: K–6

Inside Secrets of Creating a Responsive Classroom Climate
Cristal McGill, Ph.D., Education Consultant, ASU Faculty Associate, Teacher Education Programs, CO

Participants will leave with one of the biggest secrets to lead any group to the most productive mental viewpoint from which to maximize the learning from that experience. This highly practical session explores a series of seldom-discussed techniques. Each idea can stand alone as a useful tool. This fast-paced, innovative, and dynamic session explains why, while simultaneously demonstrating how to put these ideas into practice.

Walk away with a “neural explosion” of ideas guaranteed to lift any learning activity to an entirely new level.

Come expecting to be physically engaged and mentally stimulated throughout this high-powered session.

Strand: NEW!; Instructional Strategies
Grade Level: K–12

Fight Crime: Invest in Kids
Brian Lee, Deputy Director, Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, CA

California faces a dropout crisis that poses a significant threat to public safety. An estimated one in three California high school students does not graduate from high school on time. High school dropouts are three-and-one-half times more likely than high school graduates to be arrested, and more than eight times as likely to be in jail or prison. Fight Crime: Invest in Kids California is a nonprofit, bipartisan, anti-crime organization led by California's sheriffs, police chiefs, district attorneys, and crime victims dedicated to reducing crime. This session will address their efforts to reduce the dropout rate and its impact on schools and communities.

Strand: NEW!, Safety and Violence Prevention; CASCWA; Foster Youth & Juvenile Detention
Grade Level: K–12

CSS Toolkit: SST Training
Andrew Stetkevich, Staff Development Specialist/CSS Field Colleague, Riverside Staff Development Center; Vicki Butler, Director, Val Verde USD, CA

Participants will explore best practices in the SST process, including gaining teacher buy-in, viewing video clips of elementary and secondary SST meetings, strategies to elicit parent and student participation, networking with SST facilitators around the state, nuts and bolts of implementation and recordkeeping, and strategy resources that address the strengths and needs of students and families.

Strand: CSS Toolkit; VetORC
Grade Level: K–12

A New View of ADHD: Hands-On Tools for Non-Traditional Learners
Frank Kros, Executive Vice President, The Children's Guild, MD

So what's new about ADHD? The invention of noninvasive, highly practical scanning technologies now makes it possible to observe the structure and function of the brain as never before! These observations have produced a new view of what actually happens in the ADHD brain during learning, concentration, stress, and emotional trauma. Based on this research, 14 practical, hands-on strategies are provided to enhance the effectiveness of your teaching, improve the quality of your therapeutic interventions, and strengthen your helping relationship with ADHD students. Highly interactive, this “learn and do” workshop incorporates brain scans, film, music, art, manipulatives, and movement to transform your thinking about and boost your skills with ADHD students.

This workshop is designed for educators and parents of ADHD students. Principals will also find the effective, low-cost or no-cost interventions very useful as school-wide strategies.

Strand: Engaging At-Risk Students
Grade Level: K–12

REFOCUS™: The Most Powerful Solution to Problem Behavior
Greg Solomon, Inst. Music Teacher, Vista Heights Middle School, CA

At the core of the nationally acclaimed Time To Teach! program is the strategy of REFOCUS™, and it is unquestionably the most powerful solution to problem behavior ever developed for the classroom teacher. By effectively using REFOCUS™ the classroom teacher will have fewer disruptions to teaching, more Time To Teach, and more energy and fun than ever before. You will learn that when behaviors are addressed early and consistently, without giving multiple requests and repeated warnings, your classroom will run more smoothly than you ever thought possible!

Strand: Engaging At-Risk Students
Grade Level: K–12

The Art of Sequential Learning for Kids in Chaos
Ray Culberson, Director, San Bernardino District Office, CA

Growing numbers of children come to school from an environment of crime and neglect, often suffering from depression, anxiety, conduct disorder, ADHD, and a host of other emotionally charged issues. In this session, you will learn strategies for handling difficult students, as well as techniques for maintaining your own personal sanity as you try to effectively engage these families.

Strand: Engaging At-Risk Students
Grade Level: K–12

Principal Academy
Sue Kaiser, Principal, Sierra Vista Middle School, CA

It is possible to change your school! Learn how Kwis Elementary went from being one of the most challenged schools in the area to being a California Distinguished School. Sue Kaiser will tell you step by step how this change occurred and how you can use a similar methodology to create success in your school. Bring your challenges and your questions, as well as your own success stories to share, and enjoy some time to reflect with your peers about what is possible and how to achieve the results you want in your school.

Strand: Increasing Academic Achievement; VetORC
Grade Level: K–7

All Students Can Write At-Standard, Multi-Paragraph Essays
Carolyn Hood, Master Trainer, Learning Headquarters, CA

This exciting session features a standards-aligned writing system designed to help all students master those difficult-to-conquer, grade-level writing genres. Learn interactive techniques to differentiate instruction and motivate students to integrate strong sentences, smooth transitions, rigorous content, and genre-based structure into their multiple-paragraph essays. Leave with research-based organizers for engaging students in writing powerful narrative, response to literature, and persuasive compositions. Use these effective modeling strategies immediately to catapult your students into successful, standards-based writing!

Strand: Instructional Strategies
Grade Level: K–8

Empowering and Partnering with Youth to Stop School Bullying and Violence
Brett Naftzger, MPA, Community Matters, CA

Bullying and violence prevent effective teaching and learning. Students hold the key: with what they see, hear, and know, they can intervene where adults can't. Community Matters presents field-tested best practices to equip and empower student leaders, ages 10–19, with nonviolent skills to prevent and stop bullying and violence and involve adult leaders in a partnership with these youth. Activities, Q & A, DVD clips, Power-Point, discussions, student ambassadors' presentation (if possible).

Strand: Safety and Violence Prevention
Grade Level: 4–12

Trickery, Trolling, and Threats: Understanding and Addressing Cyberbullying
Marcie Denberg Serra, Assistant Director of Education, San Diego Anti-Defamation League, CA

For the current generation of teens, e-mailing, instant messaging, text messaging, chatting, and blogging are a vital means of self-expression and a central part of their social lives. This session will look at how some youth are misusing Internet and cell phone technology to bully and harass others, and even to incite violence. The session will provide educators and administrators with strategies to respond effectively to cyberbullying.

The workshop will also provide practical information and opportunities for skill-building that will support school communities in developing comprehensive plans for preventing and taking action against cyberbullying and social cruelty in online forums.

Strand: NEW!; Safety and Violence Prevention; CASCWA
Grade Level: 6–12

Gone With The Wind: A Missed Day of School Can Never Be Replaced
Truancy: Mediation and Prosecution
Lois Baer, Deputy District Attorney, Truancy Program Director, Office of the District Attorney, Santa Clara County, CA

This presentation will outline the programs that a district attorney's office can provide when students are habitually truant from school. The Model Mediation and Prosecution Programs of the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office will be covered. These programs have been successfully used for over 14 years. The D.A. Mediation Program is an intervention that can be presented to families to remedy their students' truant habits short of going to court. The D.A. Prosecution Program covers parents of elementary students who are not taking their children to school as well as truant middle and high school students. The discussion will include applicable charges for truancy and the consequences for each. Participants will leave with an effective strategy for addressing at-risk habitually truant students at the elementary, middle and high school levels.

Strand: NEW!; Family and Community; CASCWA
Grade Level: K–12