Eloise has a passion for elementary education. She has been an elementary teacher, an educational consultant, an adjunct professor and most recently, a principal of a PreK-5 school.

She was a primary classroom teacher for 12 years, ten of them at the Newton School in South Strafford, Vermont. While teaching, she also took on many leadership roles including primary team leader and assistant principal. She was involved with steering the curriculum, developing formative assessment, action planning, teacher mentoring, and providing professional development.

Eloise spent four years as an educational consultant working for school systems throughout Vermont. School consulting included: full or half- day workshops, teaching graduate courses, in-class support to teachers through modeling, lesson planning & assessment. Consulting for Vermont Institutes involved K-4 Writing Benchmark Team, Grades 3-8 Writing GLE Development Team & Grades K-2 Writing GLE Development Team.

In addition, Eloise currently teaches graduate level courses for Southern New Hampshire University. This program offers Master's of Education degrees and has satellite cohorts all over Vermont. She teaches a course titled, Dimensions of Assessment and Evaluation. This course helps teachers to understand the importance of purposeful formative assessment and provides opportunities for them to apply this immediately to their practice. Teachers, both veteran and new, are amazed at the effect of identifying specific learning targets and then purposefully assessing whether students are progressing towards them.

She began her administrative career as the principal of the Samuel Morey School in Fairlee, Vermont. At Samuel Morey, she successfully built a Professional Learning Community with her faculty and staff. In addition, she worked collaboratively with the other administrators in the Rivendell School District focusing on equity and successful learning for ALL students.

She is now the proud principal at Castleton Elementary School, in Castleton, VT. This is a Pre-K – 6th grade school with about 310 students. At CES, each student is challenged intellectually, creatively, physically and socially to meet the global demands of an ever-changing, diverse world.

Eloise is one of the five founding members of the Vermont Writing Collaborative which is committed to helping all students write thoughtfully and effectively. She is a co-author of Writing for Understanding:Using Backwards Design to Help All Students Write Effectively, published in 2008 by Authentic Education.

Eloise can be reached by email with this link.

Joey has taught at the middle school level for 27 years, teaching English and Social Studies at the Newton School in South Strafford, Vermont. Earlier, she taught Special Education in Minnesota at the elementary level. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Mount Holyoke College, and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies degree from Dartmouth College.

For the past 15 years, Joey has been deeply involved with writing instruction at the state level in Vermont. She has worked as a writing network leader, and at the Vermont Department of Education, where she has worked closely with schools in need of assistance and with the development of the Vermont grade expectations (GE's) in writing, grades K-12. She served as a content area specialist in developing the New Standards Reference Exam, and later in developing the blueprint for the writing portion of the NECAP, the New England Common Assessment Program.

Collaboration has been key to Joey's work, both in her own classroom and now with other teachers. For the last five years, she has been deeply involved with professional development for Vermont teachers. She has provided school-based professional development in writing for many schools around the state, working closely with teachers from Kindergarten through Grade 12. Much of this work has involved providing graduate level courses, and all has been tailored to the specific writing instruction needs of the school or district.

Joey is the lead author of Writing for Understanding: Using Backward Design to Help All Students Write Effectively, published in 2008 by Authentic Education. A founding member of the Vermont Writing Collaborative, she shares the commitment of her colleagues to helping all students write thoughtfully and effectively.

Joey can be reached by email with this link.

Karen is the proprietor of Abecedarian, a company dedicated to providing quality school- based professional development.

With twenty-five years of teaching experience in primary, elementary, middle and high schools, as well as college, and adult education levels, she feels at home in any classroom. Her extensive experience allows her to adapt each lesson to the needs of the children, teachers, and school.

She was part of the team that developed the Vermont and the Tri-State Grade Expectations in writing and the blueprint for the NECAP state writing assessment. With these experiences and as part of the standards setting process, she is well- versed in state standards.

Karen also wrote a grant which funded Vermont's primary writing benchmarks and then led the project to success. She was instrumental in creating materials for and presenting at Vermont's literacy network meetings - primary middle school and high school.

Her additional experience in curriculum development has inspired her to create standards-based curriculum maps and integrated, differentiated instructional units for grades K-12. She believes in standard-based instruction and using the portfolio system as a formative assessment.

Her belief that it is important to serve her professional community compelled Karen to donate many hours of her time to various organizations. For eight years she was a member of the New England Teachers of English Executive Board and served for two years as conference chair as well. She was the Affiliate Coordinator for the NCTE Standing Committee on Affiliates from 1999 - 2002 and still serves as the NCTE Vermont State Coordinator for the Achievement Awards in Writing. She has repeatedly presented at numerous national and local professional organizations including ASCD (Association of School and Curriculum Development), National Council of Teachers of English, the New England Association of Teachers of English, Teachers Who Write, and the Rhode Island ASCD. She also presented internationally spending two weeks teaching in Singapore.

She is also beginning to serve as a part-time co-principal of The Block Island School in Rhode Island, working with the administrative team of John Canole, co-principal, and Robert Hicks, superintendent.

Karen can be reached by email with this link.

Expertise /Areas of Interest

Curriculum Design: integrated, differentiated units emphasizing critical skills in reading and writing

Standards-based Writing Instruction: Using formative assessment as a tool for planning writing instruction

Developing concrete, practical tools and methodologies for teachers of writing

Multi-age teaching and program design

Awards and Honors:

2009 Vermont State Teacher of the Year

SMARTer Kids Award for Teaching Excellence

UVM Outstanding Teacher

Pi Lambda Theta International Honor Society in Education

Elementary Advisory Board - Dartmouth College of Education

Diana has been an elementary school teacher for 27 years. She holds two Bachelor of Arts degrees from Boston College in Elementary and Special Education and earned a Master's degree in Education by Design from Antioch New England University in 1999. She currently team teaches in an innovative multiage cluster of third, fourth and fifth graders at the Newton School in South Strafford, Vermont, where she has worked since 1983.

For over a decade, Diana has been a strong advocate for statewide literacy. She was part of the team that developed Vermont’s grade expectations in writing. She also helped to choose the state primary writing benchmarks and to lead Vermont’s first primary writing network meetings. Diana is the creator of The Painted Essay™ and other useful tools for teachers. As a consultant to schools and school districts throughout New England, Diana has shared methods and materials for teaching writing through workshops, conference presentations and demonstration lessons. She has been a graduate instructor, as well as a college supervisor for student teachers, and has served as a content area specialist on the development team of the New Standards Reference Exam in English and Language Arts.

Diana is a strong believer in the power of collaboration. In addition to coauthoring Writing for Understanding, Diana is a founding member of The Vermont Writing Collaborative and is committed to the mission of supporting teachers as they work to help all students become effective writers.

In 2009, Diana was honored with a resolution adopted by the Vermont State Legislature in recognition of two decades of distinguished work in education.

Diana can be reached by email with this link.

Jane has been teaching in Vermont for 39 years. She is currently the literacy specialist in Burlington, providing professional development for teachers and administrators in six elementary schools. She has been a classroom teacher, Title I reading teacher and for the past six years directed the district's Reading First Program. She holds both a Bachelor of Arts and a Master's of Education degree from the University of Vermont.

As literacy specialist, Jane helped unify reading and writing instruction across all grade levels. Jane coaches teachers, facilitates team meetings, co-teaches reading and writing lessons and co- authors standards based units of study. She co- wrote a district reading assessment for grades 3-5 and wrote new, on-demand constructed responses to accompany the district's reading test.

Beginning in 1980, Jane taught graduate and undergraduate courses in reading and language arts for Saint Michael's College, and now provides workshops and courses across the state. Jane worked on the Grade Expectations (GE's) in reading and writing, was a writing network co-leader, and provided professional development across the state as the Christa McAuliffe Fellow for Vermont.

Jane is a founding member of The Vermont Writing Collaborative and a co-author of Writing for Understanding. She is passionate about improving writing instruction in all classrooms.

Jane can be reached by email with this link.