December 2014 e-Newsletter

Holiday greetings from the Dean and the entire faculty and staff at the Michael D. Eisner College of Education.

We hope you have a restful and fulfilling holiday season.

See you again in the new year!

Dr. Kathleen Rowlands took two Writing Project Teacher Consultants with her to the National Writing Project Annual Meeting and the National Council of Teachers of English Annual Conference in Washington D.C. Also, Dr. Rowlands has been appointed by the State Board of Education (SBE) to serve as a reviewer to evaluate instructional materials for the 2015 English Language Arts/English Language Development (ELA/ELD) Adoption.

On December 2, the CTL hosted their first Education on the Edge event with Dr. Jeremy Bailenson from Stanford, who focused on virtual reality and its role in education. The CTL was also pleased to host Drs. Sally Spencer and Beth Lasky from the Special Education Department to show how CSUN is using virtual reality in its teacher education program through TeachLivE.

Also in December, Dr. Wendy Murawski and Dr. Tamarah Ashton presented for multiple days for over 250 LAUSD elementary and secondary teachers and administrators from Education Service Center North on the topic of co-teaching and inclusion.

Drs. Murawski & Ashton are working through the Center for Teaching & Learning to help LAUSD's core waiver schools become more inclusive by building communities of practice around co-teaching and differentiation. This is Year Two with this particular cohort of educators.

Dr. Susan Belgrad and Dr. Norm Herr have been invited to represent California State Northridge in the "NASA STEM Educator Professional Development Collaborative." They join a select team of experts that includes nation-wide NASA centers, universities, teacher educators, informal educators, school districts, and teachers.

The intended goal of the NASA Collaborative is to advance a professional development model that will promote the development, review and delivery of STEM teacher professional development -- particularly in asserting the importance of integrating culturally-relevant pedagogy in mathematics and science.