Response to Intervention (RTI) & Comprehensive Student Support (CSS)
Jim Anderson, Intervention Team Coordinator, CSS Field Colleague, Health & Human Services, LAUSD, CA

How will the new federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA) legislation affect your CSS program? This session will cover the history behind the legislation, how other states are interpreting the law, and how California is making plans to implement it. This informative and exciting session is designed to help you better understand RTI philosophy and how you can use RTI to strengthen your CSS program.

Strand: Best Practices; Foster Youth; VetORC
Grade Level: K-6

Student Success Teams: A Link to RTI and Beyond
Andrew Stetkevich, Staff Development Specialist/CSS Field Colleague, Riverside Staff Development Center, CA; Vicki Butler, CSS Field Colleague, Director, Val Verde USD, CA

The presentation will provide participants with best practices in implementing Student Success Teams (SST) at their school sites. Participants will obtain ideas on how to integrate Response to Intervention (RTI) while maintaining the fidelity of the SST process. Participants will also network with other schools to share ideas on all elements of the SST process.

Strand: Best Practices; VetORC
Grade Level: K–12

Framework for Understanding Poverty
Ruby Payne, Ph.D., President, Author, Consultant, aha! Process, Inc., TX

This session will be a follow-up in-depth look at Dr. Payne's keynote.

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

Enhance Parents' Spanish Literacy: Start a “Plaza Comunitaria”
Linda Coyne, Principal/Director, Community Education Center, Soledad USD, CA

Many of our Spanish-speaking parents did not finish school in their homeland. This workshop will show you how to start a program to assist parents in acquiring their elementary and secondary education certificates through a collaboration with the government of Mexico.

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

Mission Possible: Making a Dream Come to Fruition
Christine L. Tippett, Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Marriage, Family Therapist, Sacramento, CA

Mission Possible is a School-Based Family Counseling Program operating on middle and high school campuses with high risk students, to facilitate their success academically, socially, behaviorally and emotionally as they progress through the developmental stage of identity discovery. The program brings interns from the University of San Francisco graduate program in Marriage and Family Therapy, under the supervision of a private practitioner and contracts with local school districts to provide mental health services. Participants will learn how to replicate this model in their area, with a lot of effort and little money.

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

Substance Abuse Prevention: A Win-Win for Districts, Students, and Families
John Miranda, Regional Coord. LifeSkills Training, Princeton Health Press, CA; Jim Crittenden, SDCOE Student Support Services, CA; Christina Boyd, TUPE Coord./Life Skills, SDUSD: Counseling and Guidance, CA; Pamela J. Werb, U of Min Medical School, Facility Department of Family Practice and Community Health, MN

Alcohol and other drug use results in predictable negative consequences for teens, the classroom, and districts–including absenteeism and related underachievement. Prevention and early intervention services are a cost-effective strategy to move the marker on test scores and improved school attendance.

Strand: NEW!, Safety and Violence Prevention; CASCWA; Foster Youth & Juvenile Detention; VetORC
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

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

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

Reaching Kids in School Before They Hit the Streets
Marlena Uhrik, Ed.D., Education Program Consultant, CDE: Safe & Healthy Kids Program Office, CA

In this interactive workshop, participants will learn how Student Assistance Programs (SAP) can help you address the needs of at-risk students in your local schools. You will learn ways to use the California Healthy Kids Survey (CHKS) needs assessment, strategies for working with school personnel and community agencies, and how to use resources and technical assistance for helping these students.

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

OK, I've Had the Soup: On to the Main Course! (RTI, Part II)
Terry Metzger, Principal, Marengo Ranch Elementary, CA

This session is for those already familiar with CSS and RTI. The focus will be implementation of an RTI model at the elementary school level to meet the needs of all learners. Learn about academic conferences and how targeted instruction at the Tier I level can make a difference for struggling students, and get some ideas for Tier II instruction and materials.

Strand: Best Practices; VetORC
Grade Level: K–6

Working with Parents of High-Risk Youth: The Parent Project Model
Ralph Fry, Co-Author, Parent Project, Parent Project, Inc., NV

The US Department of Justice has identified truancy as the number one indicator of juvenile delinquency. Every day in the US, 1300 students drop out of school. Parents own at least 60% of the responsibility of the education of their children and 100% of the responsibility to ensure their children go to school. Yet as a nation, we spend 98% of our resources and energy for truancy and dropout prevention in direct services to youth. Parents have incredible power to influence the decisions their children make. But how do we empower parents to make the difference in their child's life? In this interactive workshop, participants will:
• Identify the specific problems parents face raising children in today's world
• Learn specific strategies to engage, motivate, and empower parents of high-risk youth
• Discuss specific skills parents need to prevent and intervene in destructive adolescent behavior
• Learn specific strategies parents can use to improve children's school attendance and performance

Strand: Family and Community Collaboration; Juvenile Detention; VetORC
Grade Level: K–12

Student Engagement: Experience It!
Andrew Stetkevich, Staff Development Specialist/CSS Field Colleague, Riverside Staff Development Center, CA; Vicki Butler, Director, Val Verde USD, CA

This session will provide participants with multiple methods to engage students in the learning process by experiencing engagement strategies across curricular areas. Leave this session with practical engagement strategies that can be used immediately with students.

Strand: Instructional Strategies; VetORC
Grade Level: K–12

FERPA: Protecting the Rights of At-Risk Students
LeRoy Rooker, Director, Family Compliance Office, U.S. Department of Ed., DC

Students at risk are impacted in most aspects of their lives–at home, in school, and in the community. As fragile members of the school population, they are frequently bombarded by intrusions into their private lives. School personnel must ensure that these students' rights of confidentiality are not compromised. This interactive session will focus on the federal protections afforded parents and students under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and how school officials, including school law enforcement personnel, can operate under FERPA. Session will include a question and answer time.

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

Girls: Risk Factors, Trends, and Strategies
Gabriela Baeza, Project Specialist, San Diego COE, Pupil Services, Safe Schools, CA

This workshop will provide participants with an overview of the latest research relating to females and violence. Trends and research-based strategies will be discussed to provide participants with ideas on how to work with female students effectively. Ideas for how to approach issues such as academic failure, teen pregnancy, gang violence, and other risky behaviors will be explored..

Strand: NEW!, Safety and Violence Prevention; Juvenile Detention; VetORC
Grade Level: 7–12

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

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

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

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

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

Strategies That Build Rapport and Connections, and Motivate Students to Stay in School
Nancy Blackwell, Founder/Lead Trainer, Longevity of Success, CO

The number one concern of teachers is how to take care of the management aspects of being an instructor so that they can do what they came to do: teach. The skills offered in this program will positively influence the single most powerful leverage point in education: the teacher-student relationship. This workshop will be oriented to practical application and practice.

Strand: Instructional Strategies; VetORC
Grade Level: 9–12

Child Abuse Identification and Reporting
Craig Pierini, Education Programs Assistant, Foster Youth Services Program, CA

This presentation will include both identification of child abuse and neglect, along with reporting requirements of mandated reporters. In part, the information will clarify the reporting of child sexual abuse. Participants will be exposed to slides depicting child abuse victims in order to visually identify those incidents that are abusive, accidental, or the result of certain cultural practices. Participants will also be brought up-to-date on the reporting law.

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

We're All Doing Time: Reality Is for Those Who Can't Handle Drugs!
Victor La Cerva, MD, Consultant, Speaker & Writer, NM

This workshop explores talking with young people about alcohol and other drugs (AOD) in real ways. It contains an interactive process for clarifying our own values with regard to substance use, an explanation of adverse effects on the growing brain of AOD, information on the new “club drugs,” the stages of drug use, and what messages we most need to effectively communicate to

Strand: Safety and Violence Prevention; VetORC
Grade Level: 6–12

Energizers Galore–A Playshop for the Not-So-Serious
Tim Burns, Educator/Author, Learn for Life, NM

Ready for some full-on fun? Want to move, play, laugh, and learn? Then attend the Energizers Galore workshop. Come ready to move, play, and participate, and leave with activities you can use in any setting. The aim of the workshop is to provide you with activities you can use immediately for the benefit of students and colleagues.

Strand: Instructional Strategies; VetORC
Grade Level: K–12

They're Here, They're Queer, Now What?
Judy Chiasson, Program Coordinator, Office of Human Relations, Diversity, and Equity, LAUSD, CA

Increased visibility of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals and concerns is causing schools to examine their practices in the nexus of legal, cultural, and community perspectives. School personnel often feel unsure of how to proceed. This workshop will examine the legal, ethical, and practical considerations of addressing sexual orientation and gender identity in public school settings.

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

So you want to be a Shining Star School....
Karin Smith, Administrator, and Ricardo Padilla, ORC/DPS, New Lexington Elementary School, El Monte City School District, El Monte, CA

How do you go about writing the high quality Year-End Report necessary to earn this honor? This session will provide simple steps to pulling together a high quality report as well as helping you to build a strong picture of your schoolwide Comprehensive Student Support program. It's easy. You can do it!

Strand: CSS Tookit; VetORC
Grade K–12

Truth or Consequences: Keeping It Real for the At-risk Youth
Scott Charles, Trauma Outreach Coordinator, Temple University Hospital, PA

In many American classrooms, “teaching to the test” has taken priority over the teaching of life's lessons. Few have suffered the consequences of this shift more than the at-risk student. Because there is so little in their lives that can be adequately captured with a #2 pencil and a bubble form, the classroom offers fewer opportunities to use the tools with which they have been equipped as a function of their experiences. This session will suggest opportunities to empower at-risk students–and showcase their gifts–by having them address the real-world/real-life problems that exist in their communities.

Strand: NEW!, Engaging At-Risk Students; VetORC
Grade Level: K–12

Welcoming Diversity in Our Schools: Acknowledging and Supporting Students of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Parents
Lisa White, Amanda Litwin, Family Services Program–Family Advocate, L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center, CA

This interactive workshop will address the unique issues facing students with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or transgender (LGBT) parents, outline specific strategies and best practices for creating safe and welcoming classrooms and schools for all students, and provide space for educators and parents to explore their own fears, challenges, and concerns about incorporating LGBT families into existing diversity curriculum.

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

Positive Student Behavior Strategies from Individual to School-wide
Gini Dold, Principal/CSS Field Colleague; Brigitte Knight, CSS Outreach Consultant; Lori Swihart, Social Worker, E.R. Taylor Elementary, CA

This workshop will provide effective strategies to help schools implement school-wide behavior expectations on macro and micro levels. From supporting students with their individual behavior needs to creating systems to address challenging behaviors, this workshop will provide a diversity of tools and ideas for teachers, outreach consultants, and administrators.

Strand: Safety and Violence Prevention; VetORC
Grade Levels: K–5

Connecting Homeless Students and Families with School
Sarita Fuentes, Hope Region Principal/Monarch School Project CEO, SDCOE Juvenile Court & Community School District; Loretta Middleton, Senior Director, SDCOE Student Support Services, CA

This session will address the special needs of homeless youth and families and how best to keep these families connected to school. Learn key strategies for supporting homeless youth in staying in school and find out how to tap into the unique resiliency of each family. This session will address the McKinney-Vento law as it pertains to the services schools must provide and the rights it affords to parents & students in homeless situations. Sarita and Loretta have spent years working with homeless families and will provide essential information for you to be aware of as you work with this growing group of students. They will share practical tools and answer your questions so that you can create a better bridge between school and the rest of life for these families.

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

Girls United to Succeed (GUTS): A Gang Intervention Program
Barbara Rivas, Coord. Violence Prevention/Intervention Unit, Founder, GUTS Program; Cathey Casanova, GUTS Program Lead Facilitator; Reina Morgan, GUTS Program Facilitator; Erika Gonzalez, GUTS Program Facilitator Intern, Student Support Services Dept., San Diego COE, CA

This workshop will describe a gender-specific intervention model for working with highly aggressive and/or gang-affiliated girls and/or parenting teens with high risk factors. Program is geared for schools, agencies, and institutions serving school-aged girls. Data for GUTS pilot program at a middle school in the San Diego area will be shared. Q and A period allowed as part of the session.

Strand: NEW!, Safety and Violence Prevention, CASCWA; Foster Youth & Juvenile Detention; VetORC
Grade Level: 7–12