Professional Development Workshops
Embracing Our World Through Literature: Building Empathy and Critical Thinking in the Classroom
Nevada Association of School Administrators, Virtual Workshop
September 27, 2025, from 7:00 am to 3:00 pm
Embracing Our World Through Literature empowers educators to bring diverse voices and perspectives into the classroom through powerful, culturally relevant texts. Explore how literature can build empathy, cultural awareness, and critical thinking while avoiding stereotypes and ensuring authentic representation. Through hands-on activities, you’ll learn how to select inclusive texts and design meaningful lessons that help students see themselves — and others — reflected in the stories they read.
Unlocking Disciplinary Literacy Mastery: Dynamic Questioning, Student-led
Nevada Association of School Administrators, Virtual Workshop
August 23, 2025, from 7:00 am to 3:00 pm
Coaching for Success: Empowering Educators to Lead, Support, and Inspire
Nevada Association of School Administrators, Virtual Workshop
July 7, 2025, from 7:00 am to 3:00 pm
Step into your leadership potential with this hands-on workshop designed for educators ready to grow as peer coaches, literacy leaders, and instructional change-makers. Explore practical coaching models and strategies to support teacher development, boost student outcomes, and strengthen school communities. Through interactive activities and real-world scenarios, you’ll gain the tools and confidence to guide colleagues, foster collaboration, and lead with purpose.
Let's Give Them Something to Talk About:
Cultivating Critical Conversations
and Student Led Discussion
Nevada Association of School Administrators, Held Virtually
June 7, 2024, from 8:00 am to 3:00 pm
Educators have noted a marked decline in students’ willingness to engage in classroom conversations. Teachers and leaders need to create increased opportunities for productive student-led conversations to increase engagement and active learning, deepen and solidify critical content, and to provide opportunities for teachers to observe students as they apply and extend knowledge. This learning experience will focus on the content and structure of successful critical conversation to explore the modeling, scaffolding, observation, and feedback necessary for rich and stimulating student conversations.
Literacy Blueprint: Vision to Reality
Nevada Association of School Administrators, Held Virtually
June 5, 2024, from 8:00 am to 3:00 pm
Literacy continues to be a critical “hot topic” in education. Educational leaders know the importance of understanding literacy learning. They recognize the inclusive environments and effective instructional practices necessary to support students.
This workshop provides guidance in succinctly and methodically creating, implementing, and sustaining a comprehensive plan overtime requires a tailored, structured, yet flexible roadmap. Clarifying and focusing the vision to design efficient systems to collect BOTH timely observational and assessment data about literacy instructional practices and students’ engagement as readers is a collaborative process.
Weed to Re-seed Your Classroom Libraries, 2019
Custom Education Solutions, Champlin, MN
Readers flourish when they have equitable access to self-selected texts in rich and diverse classroom libraries. Watch your students bloom when they connect to texts that foster identity, increase social-emotional health and offer window, mirror and sliding glass door experiences.
MESPA Literacy Academy
Minnesota Elementary School Principals' Association
For nine years, MESPA has sponsored a four-day workshop series, facilitated by Dr. Bonnie Houck. School principals and district leaders collaborate in their learning and application of the Literacy Classroom Visit Model. This system of data collection and analysis equips strong, knowledgeable instructional leaders, able to develop both collaboration across a community and a systematic, data-based review of what is and what can be achieved in school literacy. The goal is to establish a culture of literacy ensuring that all students achieve.
Literacy Academy for Leaders, 2018
Grant Wood Area Education Services Agency, Iowa
This four day course will bring together principals and leaders to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to efficiently lead improvement initiatives in teacher development and student outcomes related to literacy. By identifying quality teaching and effective practices that promote literacy learning, this Literacy Leadership Academy will develop the capacity of leaders to: recognize effective literacy instruction; identify instructional needs; observe and conference with teachers to advance reflective practices and ensure continuous improvement; and establish a culture of literacy ensuring that all students achieve.