CSS Toolkit: Coordinated Services Team
Bonnie Mooney, Family Service Coordinator/CSS Field Colleague, Safe Schools & Healthy Students; Gabriela Layseca, Interim Director/Lead Family Case Manager, Montclair Community Collaborative, CA

What will it take to develop an effective Coordinated Services Team? How do you identify student needs? What internal and external resources will you need? How do you “mine” for resources in your community? How do you conduct effective meetings? How do you evaluate whether it is working well? How do you develop early intervention and collaboration with feeder schools/clusters?

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

Shining Star School–Academic Achievement
Karen Snyder, Principal; Adriana Rivarola, CSS Outreach Consultant, Aero Haven Elementary; Elva Reyes, Principal; Irma Herrera, CSS Outreach Consultant, Soto Street Elementary

Shining Star Schools are Comprehensive Student Support schools that scored well in this year's annual peer review and showed significant gains in academic improvement by meeting their API and AYP targets.

These Shining Star Schools present how they used the CSS strategies to make impressive gains in students' academic achievement.

Strand: Best Practices
Grade Level: K–6

Shining Star School–SST
Mary De Splinter, Principal; Christine Mohatt, CSS Outreach Consultant, Elder Creek Elementary School; Bruce Lauria, Principal; Lori Michno, CSS Outreach Consultant, Vista Grande Elementary School

Shining Star Schools are Comprehensive Student Support schools that scored well in this year's annual peer review and showed significant gains in academic improvement by meeting their API and AYP targets.

These Shining Star Schools present how they used the Student Success Team Process as an early identification and intervention approach to help students achieve success in school.

Strand: Best Practices
Grade Level: K–6

Getting Creative, Being Present, Taking Care of Yourself and Your Students
Victor La Cerva, MD, Consultant, Speaker & Writer, NM

Many teachers and school administrators, because of the nature of their service work, do not take care of themselves appropriately. They often work long hours, forget to take breaks, interact poorly with coworkers, and spread their stress around the living room when they get home. We will use the notions of creativity and being present to explore:
* balancing the mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of ourselves;
* dancing creatively with our stress in the moment;
* how to become more emotionally fluent.

Strand: Best Practices; Foster Youth & Juvenile Detention; VetORC
Grade Level: K–12

Empowering Discipline: An Approach that Works with At-Risk Students
Vicki Phillips, M.Ed., Director, Personal Development, CA

Most school discipline plans are based on the need to control student behavior. With those at-risk youths who see no future and feel they have nothing to lose, “control” becomes counterproductive, and they spiral downhill. Vicki Phillips, author of Empowering Discipline and Turning Them Around, calls for a new approach toward discipline– one that works with at-risk youth. Learn how to handle disciplinary situations with those students who “don't want to be told what to do.”

Strand: Engaging At-Risk Students
Grade Level: 7–12

Meeting the Needs of At-Risk Students through Foster Youth Services Programs (FYS)
Michelle Lustig, MSW, Ed.D., Coordinator, Foster Youth Services, SDCOE Student Support Services, CA; Pamela Hosmer, Program Mgr./Homeless Liaison, San Diego District Office, CA; Jeni Mendel, Child Welfare & Attendance, Educational Services Division, Grossmont UHSD, CA; Karen Alexander, Homeless & Foster Youth Liaison, LMSV District Office, CA

San Diego COE Foster Youth Services Program (FYS) endeavors to respond, assist, and empower all systems that support foster youth achieving academic success. FYS programs are designed to prepare foster youth to become successful, self-sufficient, and independent adults. FYS programs across California, in 57 counties and 6 core school districts, achieve the goal of closing the achievement gap for students in foster care through thoughtful collaboration across systems. Session participants will learn about FYS programs both locally and statewide.

Strand: NEW!; Engaging At-Risk Students; CASCWA; Foster Youth; Juvenile Detention
Grade Level: K–12

Effective Home Visits
Norma Gomez, Parent & Family Involvement Coordinator, LRET Division, English Learner & Support Services, San Diego COE, CA

In this workshop you will learn ways to communicate and collaborate with parents to support student learning during home visits. We will review the goal and reason for visiting the family, what is active listening, how a medium such as body language becomes the message, and how to solve problems with the family to address the child's best interests.

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

How to Support Homeless Students and Foster Youth
Faye Eastman, Coordinator, Foster Youth Services; Brenda Dowdy, Homeless Education Program Specialist, San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools

Participants will learn about the difficulties homeless and foster youth experience. Information will be discussed on a variety of ways participants can help youth to become academically, socially, and behaviorally successful.

Strand: NEW!; Best Practices, Foster Youth
Grade Level: K–12

The Hard Work Model for Closing the Achievement Gap
Ken Sorey, Director of Development, Just for the Kids–California, CA

Learn best practices of high-performing schools as they put data and accountability to work. Interact with a panel of high-performing, high-poverty school principals who will share their proven strategies and evidence of success. You will also learn about a free, online resource, Just for the Kids–California, that uses accountability data to help schools raise academic achievement and close achievement gaps through benchmarking, site visits, and best practices from high-performing schools.

Strand: NEW!, Increasing Academic Achievement
Grade Level: K–12

Dynamic Vocabulary and Sentence-Building Strategies
Carolyn Hood, Master Trainer, Learning Headquarters, CA

Increasing the rigor and sophistication of student writing has never been easier! Learn meaningful techniques to help all students access higherlevel vocabulary, build powerful sentences, utilize sentence variety, and extend the complexity of writing through research-based strategies. Participants will learn to promote academic and descriptive vocabulary through visual, auditory, and kinesthetic pathways. Teachers will leave with a plethora of interactive techniques to assist all gifted students in writing above and beyond!

Strand: Instructional Strategies
Grade Level: K–6

Teens and Unprotected Sex: Beyond Prevention 101
Ellen Hohenstein, MA, Health Center Director, Hoover High School, CA

With birth control readily available, why do so many teens get pregnant? With the risk of HIV, why would any teen have unprotected sex? Decreasing sexual risk-taking requires implementing a continuum of prevention strategies. This interactive workshop will present a variety of strategies from integrating HIV/STD and teen pregnancy prevention into core subject area curricula to establishing individual behavioral contracts with students most at risk.

Strand: NEW!, Safety and Violence Prevention; VetORC
Grade Level: 9–12

Models of Dropout Prevention
Speakers will include representatives from the Grossmont Union HSD, Vista USD, Chula Vista ESD, and others

Ten school districts have been designated as Models of Dropout Prevention by the State School Attendance Review Board. As Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell stated, “These school districts have taken on that challenge by creating a safety net for students with persistent school attendance or behavior problems.” Superintendent O'Connell presented the districts with their awards at the annual state CASCWA conference in Long Beach in April. These sessions will present the components of these award-winning programs.

Strand: NEW!; Best Practices; CASCWA
Grade Level: K–12

On Playing a Poor Hand Well: Recent Advances in Our Understanding of Human Resilience and of the Limits of Emotional Endurance
Mark Katz, Ph.D., Learning Development Services, CA

Robert Louis Stevenson once said, “Life is not so much a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.” Why is it that so many children and youth who struggle in school manage to succeed decades later in life? And what can we learn from their life experiences? During this presentation, we will explore the sources of resilience, important protective influences, and wide-ranging turning point experiences in the lives of successful individuals who struggled during their years in school. We will also share specific ways in which schools can use these lessons learned in ways that can reverse the developmental trajectories of children, youth, and young adults who currently struggle with similar school-related problems.

Strand: Engaging At-Risk Students; Foster Youth; VetORC
Grade Level: K–12

It Is Possible! All Students Can Write at Standard (K–6)
Linda Fisher, Principal in Residence, Learning Headquarters, CA

Imagine transforming your school into a data-driven learning community where teachers are motivated and students are actively engaged in standards- based writing. A Milken National Award-winning principal will lead you through the process, strategies, and research-based tools that have proven successful in raising achievement for all students. Through dynamic video clips, instructional strategy demonstrations, and comprehensive handouts, you'll gain a repertoire of skills to use immediately..

Strand: Instructional Strategies
Grade Level: K–6

Project Read Report Form: Comprehension Strategies for Nonfiction
Andrew Stetkevich, Staff Development Specialist/CSS Field Colleague, Riverside Staff Development Center, CA

Many students struggle with comprehension in content area subjects. This presentation will provide an overview of Project Read Report Form strategies. These are multisensory strategies designed to teach students how to find the main idea and supporting details, make inferences, and organize content subject matter for retention and retrieval.

Strand: NEW!; Instructional Strategies, Foster Youth
Grade Level: 3–12