David Abrams, Asst. Commissioner for Standards, Assessment and Reporting, New York State Education Department.
David M. Abrams is in the senior management team in the New York State Education Department, in the Office of Elementary, Middle, Secondary, and Continuing Education. He provides leadership for the Department’s programs for elementary, middle, and secondary school pupils in areas of testing and assessment and data collection and analysis. Mr. Abrams manages programs that design, implement, and certify the New York State Testing Program and its attendant data collection processes. As Assistant Commissioner, Mr. Abrams works closely with the Commissioner of Education, the Deputy Commissioner, and the Board of Regents in formulating and implementing assessment policy.
Prior to his appointment as Assistant Commissioner, Mr. Abrams served as Director of Instruction for the City School District of Albany, Learning Standards Coordinator for the Capital Region Board of Cooperative Educational Services, and was a former high school English teacher. Mr. Abrams holds a Bachelor of Arts in English and history from the University of Delaware , a Masters of Arts in English from the College of Saint Rose , and a Masters of Science in Educational Administration and Policy Studies from the University at Albany . He has presented at numerous conferences on topics pertaining curriculum, instruction, and assessment.
Donna Beaudry, Capital Region Center for Arts in Education
Linda Carr, UAlbany Dept. of Reading
Linda Carr is an independent literacy consultant and a doctoral student in Reading UAlbany. Her research and professional development interests focus on elementary language arts assessment and instructional strategies, as well as instructional support programs and strategic planning to improve literacy learning. Recently, Linda retired as the Supervisor of The Literacy Center at Capital Region BOCES, to become an independent literacy consultant. Prior to The Literacy Center, Linda worked at South Colonie Central Schools for 15 years as a reading specialist, Title 1 Coordinator, and K-12 Language Arts Supervisor. Previously, Linda was a primary grade classroom teacher at Albany City Schools.
Lenora de la Luna, Asst. Professor, Skidmore Dept. of Educational Studies
Lenora de la Luna conducts research on literacy teaching and learning in multicultural and multilingual classrooms, on the circulation of power in classroom discourse, on performance-based assessment, and on teacher/researcher collaborations. She has presented her research at AERA, NCTE, NRC, QUIG, ISCRAT, the Annual TOESL Meeting, and the Sociolinguistics Symposium, among other venues. Some of her research has been published in the National Reading Conference Yearbook and The Clearing House. She has taught both children and adults at various levels from elementary school to graduate school as well as a wide range of literacy-related courses such as ESL courses in elementary schools; verbal communication courses, first-year composition courses, and literacy methods courses at the college level; and ESL writing and writing in the disciplines at the graduate level. Among the courses she routinely teaches are courses on sociolinguistic and cultural dimensions of education, bilingualism, school and society, emergent literacy, the writing process, and integrated instruction.
Aosta Edelman, ELA Supervisor, Bethlehem Central Middle School
A session for building administrators and others with responsibility for classroom
Aosta Edelman , M.S. UAlbany, was a reading teacher in grades 1-8 before becoming an English Language Arts Supervisor and she has taught English methods & elementary teaching methodology on the college-level. Ms. Edelman is also a Chapter Member Liaison for the upstate New York chapters of Phi Delta Kappa and a Steering Committee Member of the Capital District Association of Women Administrators.
Virginia Goatley, Assoc. Professor, UAlbany Dept. of Reading and Associate Dean for Professional Studies
Virginia Goatley, Ph.D. Michigan State University . In work wit h the National Research Center for English Learning and Achievement, she is studying the integration of literacy and social studies across the elementary grades. In this project, she has traced the literacy/social studies learning of several students as they moved through each grade from second to seventh. In her role as Assoc. Dean of Professional Studies, she is the leader for the School of Education ’s review for national accreditation by the Teacher Education Accreditation Council.
George Kamberelis, Assoc. Professor, UAlbany Dept. of Reading
George Kamberelis teaches courses on social theory, social and cultural dimensions of literacy learning, media literacy, and qualitative inquiry. Until recently, his research focused primarily on children’s writing development; literacy, culture and identity, and philosophical foundations of qualitative inquiry. Professor Kamberelis’ most recent program of research (with Lenora de la Luna) focuses on English language learning among adolescents and adults in various school and community sites in Amsterdam , NY . With Greg Dimitriadis, Professor Kamberelis has published two books with (On Qualitative Inquiry and Theory for Education), many articles in journals such as Research in the Teaching of English, Reading Research Quarterly, Linguistics and Education, Journal of Literacy, Literacy, Teaching and Learning, Language Arts, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues, and many chapters in various edited volumes
Judith Langer, Distinguished Professor, UAlbany Dept. of Educational Theory and Practice and Director, Center on English Learning & Achievement (CELA).
Judith A. Langer is distinguished professor at UAlbany where she is a faculty member in the Department of Educational Theory and Practice and director of the National Research Center on English Learning and Achievement. She is also founder and director of the Albany Institute for Research in Education. Langer is an internationally recognized scholar who specializes in literacy, language learning and what schools can do to help students do well. On the one hand she is a theory builder, developing and testing out concepts such as how the literate mind works that can underlie how we target educational needs and educational reform. She also does research in schools to develop pedagogy that can improve education at the national, state and local levels, including what gets done on a daily basis in classrooms.
Her studies have had a tremendous effect on instruction as well as testing both across the United States and in other countries. She is consultant to many educational improvement efforts and many groups use her findings. Recently, the Annenberg/CPB Channel produced three separate television program series based on her work on literature. (One series has already been aired.) She has also been a long-term consultant to the National Assessment of Educational Progress and is former editor of Research in the Teaching of English.
She has won 18 awards and honors, including: Distinguished Professor, State University of New York (2002); State University of New York Chancellor’s Award for Exemplary Contributions to Research (2001); Distinguished Benton Fellow, University of Chicago (1999); Excellence in Research Award, University at Albany (1997); Fellow and Scholar in Residence, Rockefeller Foundation, Bellagio, Italy (1994); and Presidential Award for Lifetime Career Achievement, Hofstra (1992). Sh e w as recently inducted into the Reading Hall Of Fame and awarded honoris causis (honorary doctorate) by Uppsala University , Sweden .
Langer has published 10 books among them Language, Literacy, and Culture: Issues of Society and Schooling; How Writing Shapes Thinking: Studies of Teaching and Learning; Envisioning Literature: Literary Understanding and Literature Instruction; and Effective Literacy Instruction. Getting to Excellent: How to Create Better Schools was recently released.
Eija Rougle, Senior Instructional & Professional Development Facilitator, School of Education’s Center on English Learning & Achievement (CELA)
Eija Rougle , Ph.D. UAlbany, has been working with teachers of various subjects and at all levels, from kindergarten to high school, to help them improve instruction to foster higher literacy achievement for their students. Her specialty is using discussion to aid all learners in thinking deeply, making better sense of texts and th e w orld around them, and articulating their thinking in talk and in writing.
Johanna Shogan, Consultant and Professional Development Facilitator, School of Education’s Center on English Learning & Achievement (CELA)
Following a career that spanned 34 years in NYS public schools teaching English Language Arts grades 7-12, Johanna Shogan is now a consultant. She brings her expertise and experience of how students learn successfully to the workshop.
Leigh Strimbeck, Capital Region Center for Arts in Education
Gilbert Valverde, Assoc. Professor, UAlbany Dept. of Educational Administration & Policy Studies
Gilbert A. Valverde, Ph.D. U. of Chicago , specializes in the cross-national study of curriculum policies, focusing on the role of educational standards, indicator systems, textbook and assessment policy in the configuration of educational opportunity structures. In addition to his ongoing work with the US National Research Center for the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, he is also conducting research on evaluation, standards, indicator systems and other aspects of curricular policies in the context of education reforms underway in Latin America .
Sean Walmsley, Professor and Chair, UAlbany Dept. of Reading
A native of Great Britain , Sean Walmsley , graduated from Trinity College Dublin with his BA and MA in History, and from Harvard University with his Ed.D in Reading . He has several years teaching experience in elementary and secondary schools in both England and the U.S. Since joining the UAlbany faculty, he has assumed a major role in broadening the department's mission to encompass all the language arts, and has made the integration of language arts a primary teaching and research focus. Dr. Walmsley became Chair of the Reading Department in 2001.
He is co-author of Teaching Kindergarten: A Developmentally-Appropriate Approach (Heinemann, 1992), author of Children Exploring Their World: Theme Teaching in Elementary School (Heinemann, 1994), co-editor of No Quick Fix: Rethinking Literacy Programs in America's Elementary Schools (TC Press/IRA, 1995), co-author of Kindergarten: Ready or Not? (Heinemann, 1996) and Teaching with Favorite Marc Brown Books (Scholastic, 1998). He is currently completing a book about reforming language arts, K-12, based on two decades working with school districts primarily in New York State, helping them to rethink their K-12 approach to language arts. His latest research project involves examining all the literacy assessments used with children from birth to kindergarten
Trudy Walp, Instructor, UAlbany Dept of Reading
Trudy Walp , M.S. UAlbany, was a Reading Specialist in the elementary grades at North Warren Central School , Chestertown , New York where she taught for 24 years. She has taught literacy-related graduate courses as an adjunct instructor at The College of Saint Rose and the University at Albany for a number of years and she recently chaired the NY State Education Department’s Grade 3-5 ELA Core Curriculum Committee.
