Please join us for our Spring Meeting:

Unpacking Assumptions
Working toward better understandings of and relationships with parents of learning disabled children in private school communities.

Presented by
Katherine H. Scott, Ed.D

May 8, 2007
Lawrence Academy
Groton, MA

Presented by Dr. Katherine Scott, Ed.D: Dr. Kate Scott has been working in the field of learning disabilities for twenty-five years. She has been a teacher, an educational therapist, a clinician, and a researcher. She has worked in schools, hospital clinics, and in private practice. Kate completed her doctorate in developmental psychology at the Harvard Graduate School of Education where the focus of her research was on better understanding: 1) how parents of learning disabled children make sense of their parenting experiences, and 2) how these parents might be better supported within school communities. Currently, Kate has a private practice in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Schedule for the Day

8:30-9 Registration and Coffee
9-10 Discussion of NEALS Survey and 2007-2009 Executive Board Elections.
10-12 “Unpacking Assumptions--Part one
12-12:45 Affinity Lunch Meetings
12:45-1:45 “Unpacking Assumptions”--Part two
1:45-2:00 Closing Notes

To register, please contact Amy Good at: agood@lacademy.edu.
The cost for the day is $20 for Members or $50 (includes NEALS membership) for Non-members.

Registration is limited to 100 participants, so register soon.

The Spring Meeting Program is here!

Fay School’s 4th Annual
Research into Practice Conference

Best Practices of Integrated Programs in
School Counseling, Literacy Development
and Learning Support Services

May 8, 2006
9:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Program

9:30 – 10:00 Registration – Mars Room

10:15 – 11:30 Keynote Speaker – Theatre

Dr. Roselmina Indrisano
Department of Literacy and Language, Counseling and Development
Boston University School of Education

Art Informed by Science

***

The lunches and session presentations are grouped by areas of interest. Use the key below to help you register:

Counseling C
Literacy L
Learning Specialists S


11:45 – 1:00 Affinity lunches – Reinke

Choose your area of interest and enjoy discussion on topics and issues facing professionals in your field over lunch.

1:15 – 2:30 Session I

2:45 – 4:00 Session II

***
1:15 – 2:30 Session I

C1 Whose needs are being met? Effectively managing individual and institutional wellness through a developmental counseling model
Schools are increasingly expected to provide more complete services and accommodations for students. How do counselors and administrators protect both students in need and the institution itself when needs conflict and when school counselors may be qualified to handle some, but not all, of the mental health issues they face? This session will provide counselors and administrators the opportunity to explore current challenges schools face and address institutional and individual risk through effective partnerships, clear administrative protocols, and appropriate shifts in training and practice.
Presenters: Sarah Rogers-McMillan, Head of Upper School, Fay School; Tom Dukes, Clinical Faculty, Boston University’s School of Education

C2 Running the gamut: Integrating services to prevent, manage, and respond to students in need or in crisis
This session will look at three cases of students in need of support to illustrate how collaborative prevention and intervention strategies can create a holistic approach to promoting the wellness of all students. We will look at three very different student cases with varying needs to show how school counselors, deans of students, academic support, administration, and faculty can team together to help students with high needs through challenging times in their lives.
Presenters: Jennifer Taylor, Director of Counseling Services; Scott LeBrun, Dean of Students; Kara Ashley, Learning Services, Fay School

C3 Counselor on board! Grade level team leaders and counselors achieve more together
This workshop will explore how the integrated counseling program has developed at Fay through the lens of grade level teams. We will discuss how counselors and grade level team leaders work together to better serve students’ academic, social, and emotional development through affinity groups, parental partnerships, faculty consultation and student support.
Presenters: Elyse Carlin, School Counselor; Joanna Wishart, Assistant Head of Upper School, Fay School

C4 Why schools should expect more of lunches than just a good meal: A comprehensive developmental group counseling model
Using a comprehensive developmental approach, learn how to integrate group counseling into your school counseling program. Discover how to be more effective and efficient with students during a lunch period through use of creative strategies and lesson plans for such topics as cliques, body image, and sexuality. Take home handouts for everything you need to get started.
Presenter: Sarah Crosley, Boston University/Fay School Counseling Intern

L1 Integrating learning services and literacy in the math classroom
We will show how collaboration between the math teacher and the Learning Services tutor supports the math curriculum in fifth grade. This is not a pull-out program. Rather the tutor is integrated in the classroom and works with the classroom teacher, supporting students as well as observing their progress in class. Emphasis is on writing in math in the fifth grade curriculum and how conceptual understanding is made visible through the writing process.
Presenters: Lainie Schuster, Lower School Math Teacher; Mary Martin, Lower School Learning Services, Fay School

L2 I’m a reader! Using book clubs to evaluate students’ reading attitudes, habits, and self-perceptions as readers
To promote lifelong reading habits, it is essential to foster positive attitudes and to cultivate students’ reading interests from a young age. In order to accomplish this, reading attitudes, interests, and habits about reading need to be examined in relation to students’ academic self-concept. The purpose of this workshop is to present our on-going work with third grade students and to discuss the effect of a counselor-led literacy intervention on struggling readers’ attitudes and interests about reading, as well as how these in turn affect their self-perceptions as readers. We will examine the history of this program, its components, and provide findings from the initial study, while welcoming collegial discussion. Handouts will be available.
Presenters: Anne M. Bishop, Head of Lower School, Fay School; Irene Papadopoulos, Boston University Doctoral Candidate/Fay School Counseling Intern

S1 Roxbury rocks!
Documentation can be an arduous process at best. Join me as I share some simplified ways (down and dirty) to document. I have some suggestions that may organize and simplify your job and at the same time increase your efficiency.
Presenter: Leah Milcowitz-Stancil, Director of Roxbury Academic Support Program, Cheshire Academy

S2 The kitchen table approach: From appetizer to dessert
What is the best part of any meal? Appetizers and dessert, of course! We will look at how we start and finish the academic lives of our Academic Skills Center (ASC) students while they are at Miss Hall’s School (MHS). The ASC at Miss Hall’s helps students “launch” with two key collaborations between ASC students and learning specialists: a fall letter to MHS teachers and a spring learning profile for college.
Presenters: Fredi Hungate, Learning Specialist; Vaunie Graulty, Director of Academic Skills Center, Miss Hall’s School

2:45 – 4:00 Session II

C5 Making the grade: An integrated approach to student success
The Academic Support Services and Counseling teams work closely together to support the needs of the whole child. Come learn about our model combining advising, counseling services and academic supports to meet the individual needs of our students. We will share information regarding our advising program and how our Enrichment Center functions within the school. This session will be discussion-based so participants can share their own program strengths and walk away with a handful of ideas for implementation at their own schools.
Presenters: Lesley Colognesi, Director of Academic Support Services; Tara Paulauskas, School Counselor, Beaver Country Day School

C6 Who’s your client? Building effective bridges through the PR work of school counseling
As school counselors, we always put students first. However, as the roles and responsibilities of school counselors change, we have a new clientele that we must recognize. Administrators, faculty, advisors and parents all have a role in the students’ well-being. In a world where most of what counselors do appears to be “confidential,” how can we help educate others about our work? Learn how to identify who counselors’ “other” clients are and strategies to create effective partnerships with faculty, administrators, and parents on behalf of students.
Presenters: Tom Dukes, Clinical Faculty, Boston University’s School of Education; Elyse Carlin, School Counselor, Fay School; Sarah Crosley, Boston University/Fay School Counseling Intern

C7 Influencing the culture and climate of schools through a whole-child lens: Integrating counseling expertise into every facet of school programs
This session will focus on the broad programmatic impact school counselors can have in building a healthy school culture and climate in which children and adolescents can grow. As the resident expert in child and adolescent development, the school counselor’s role should include influencing academic and co-curricular programs so that they are sensitive to the developmental realities and needs of all students. In a panel discussion, come see how one Director of School Counseling takes on the role of consultant and direct service provider in coordinated and integrated student life, residential life, chapel, and character and health curricula and programs.
Presenters: Christopher Schoberl, Academic Dean; Andy Long, Director of Residential Life; Jennifer Taylor, Director of School Counseling; Scott LeBrun, Dean of Students; Alex Steinert-Evoy, Chapel Coordinator, Fay School

L3 Avoiding the book report: GARP
Want to help your students get away from writing summary after summary? Come learn more about The Great American Reading Project (GARP). Designed for fourth, fifth and sixth graders, GARP will help you strengthen your current independent reading program. Created in 2000, this innovative concept is designed to challenge and enrich your students’ reading experience. Using a list of 150 books, students use an interactive website to read their way across the United States. Reading from Maine to Hawaii, students create not only strong written work, but will combine art, science, geography and math to share their knowledge of both the books and the states they are set in. In the era of assessing multiple intelligences, this program is not to be missed.
Presenter: James Ramsdell, Lower School English Teacher/Director of Lower School Admission, Fay School

L4 Motivation for reading: Keeping the momentum
The vast majority of young children enter school fully expecting that they will soon be proficient readers. In the early grades they happily engage in literacy tasks, believing wholeheartedly that their effort will, indeed, pay off. Unfortunately, for far too many students, intrinsic motivation for reading and other literacy activities declines by the later elementary grades and is drastically reduced by the middle school years. Many struggling readers, motivated by a desire to avoid embarrassment or reduce feelings of failure actively avoid engagement in reading. In this workshop, participants will learn about the research that sheds light on the developmental trajectory of motivation for reading and will be introduced to teaching methods that have shown promise in helping students to maintain or regain high levels of motivation.
Presenter: Susan Dougherty, Instructor and Doctoral Candidate, Boston University

S3 To be or not to be: Predictors for student success in your school environment
Get involved in your school’s admission process to improve student outcomes. This workshop will examine the importance of a thorough documentation review prior to admission; helpful suggestions on knowing what you are looking for, and how to read between the lines will be discussed. Why it is so crucial for the learning specialist to have some onus in the admission process will also be addressed. Bring questions and comments to share.
Presenter: Leslie Barry, Roxbury Support Program Team, Cheshire Academy

S4 All roads lead to the learning center
Based on the Fay School model, this session will investigate integrated learning resources with special emphasis on the role of the Learning Specialist as a catalyst for institutional change and as a resource for all students.
Presenters: Kara Ashley, Learning Specialist, Director Fay Summer Institute, President, Northeast Association of Learning Specialists (NEALS); Angela Arigoni-Mesfioui, Director Fay School Learning Center

S5 Diligence, competence, and independence
The Language Program at Trinity-Pawling School is part of the English department. It is designed to help students with mild dyslexia attain a strong grasp of the English language and become mainstreamed, college-bound students. What makes the program unique is that it has its own instructional curriculum. The teachers in the program do not help students with their own subjects; rather, they follow a systematic course of direct, explicit instruction in language skills. The success of the program depends largely on being in the context of a single-sex, highly structured school that offers a full range of support to all its students.
Presenters: MacGregor Robinson, Director of Admission: Helen Hauser, Director of the Language Program, Trinity-Pawling School

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Fay School’s 4th Annual Research into Practice Conference
Best Practices of Integrated Programs in School Counseling,
Literacy Development and Learning Support Services

May 8, 2006 – 9:30-4:00
Fay School, 48 Main Street, Southborough, MA 01772

Cost: $15 per person - $10 per person for groups of 5 or more
$10 for NEALS menbers
BU Graduate Students $5 per person

Please make checks payable to: Fay School
Payment by purchase order is welcome too.

Please complete one registration form per person.

It is important to pre-register for sessions. You may indicate 1st and 2nd choices for each session and for affinity lunches.

Mail or fax to:
Sarah Rogers-McMillan
Head of Upper School
Fay School
48 Main Street,
Southborough, MA 01772

Fax: 508-460-0842

Email alternative: Send your lunch and session preferences together with your registration information to smcmillan@fayschool.org.

The Spring Meeting Program is here!

Fay School’s 4th Annual
Research into Practice Conference

Best Practices of Integrated Programs in
School Counseling, Literacy Development
and Learning Support Services

May 8, 2006
9:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Program

9:30 – 10:00 Registration – Mars Room

10:15 – 11:30 Keynote Speaker – Theatre

Dr. Roselmina Indrisano
Department of Literacy and Language, Counseling and Development
Boston University School of Education

Art Informed by Science

***

The lunches and session presentations are grouped by areas of interest. Use the key below to help you register:

Counseling C
Literacy L
Learning Specialists S


11:45 – 1:00 Affinity lunches – Reinke

Choose your area of interest and enjoy discussion on topics and issues facing professionals in your field over lunch.

1:15 – 2:30 Session I

2:45 – 4:00 Session II

***
1:15 – 2:30 Session I

C1 Whose needs are being met? Effectively managing individual and institutional wellness through a developmental counseling model
Schools are increasingly expected to provide more complete services and accommodations for students. How do counselors and administrators protect both students in need and the institution itself when needs conflict and when school counselors may be qualified to handle some, but not all, of the mental health issues they face? This session will provide counselors and administrators the opportunity to explore current challenges schools face and address institutional and individual risk through effective partnerships, clear administrative protocols, and appropriate shifts in training and practice.
Presenters: Sarah Rogers-McMillan, Head of Upper School, Fay School; Tom Dukes, Clinical Faculty, Boston University’s School of Education

C2 Running the gamut: Integrating services to prevent, manage, and respond to students in need or in crisis
This session will look at three cases of students in need of support to illustrate how collaborative prevention and intervention strategies can create a holistic approach to promoting the wellness of all students. We will look at three very different student cases with varying needs to show how school counselors, deans of students, academic support, administration, and faculty can team together to help students with high needs through challenging times in their lives.
Presenters: Jennifer Taylor, Director of Counseling Services; Scott LeBrun, Dean of Students; Kara Ashley, Learning Services, Fay School

C3 Counselor on board! Grade level team leaders and counselors achieve more together
This workshop will explore how the integrated counseling program has developed at Fay through the lens of grade level teams. We will discuss how counselors and grade level team leaders work together to better serve students’ academic, social, and emotional development through affinity groups, parental partnerships, faculty consultation and student support.
Presenters: Elyse Carlin, School Counselor; Joanna Wishart, Assistant Head of Upper School, Fay School

C4 Why schools should expect more of lunches than just a good meal: A comprehensive developmental group counseling model
Using a comprehensive developmental approach, learn how to integrate group counseling into your school counseling program. Discover how to be more effective and efficient with students during a lunch period through use of creative strategies and lesson plans for such topics as cliques, body image, and sexuality. Take home handouts for everything you need to get started.
Presenter: Sarah Crosley, Boston University/Fay School Counseling Intern

L1 Integrating learning services and literacy in the math classroom
We will show how collaboration between the math teacher and the Learning Services tutor supports the math curriculum in fifth grade. This is not a pull-out program. Rather the tutor is integrated in the classroom and works with the classroom teacher, supporting students as well as observing their progress in class. Emphasis is on writing in math in the fifth grade curriculum and how conceptual understanding is made visible through the writing process.
Presenters: Lainie Schuster, Lower School Math Teacher; Mary Martin, Lower School Learning Services, Fay School

L2 I’m a reader! Using book clubs to evaluate students’ reading attitudes, habits, and self-perceptions as readers
To promote lifelong reading habits, it is essential to foster positive attitudes and to cultivate students’ reading interests from a young age. In order to accomplish this, reading attitudes, interests, and habits about reading need to be examined in relation to students’ academic self-concept. The purpose of this workshop is to present our on-going work with third grade students and to discuss the effect of a counselor-led literacy intervention on struggling readers’ attitudes and interests about reading, as well as how these in turn affect their self-perceptions as readers. We will examine the history of this program, its components, and provide findings from the initial study, while welcoming collegial discussion. Handouts will be available.
Presenters: Anne M. Bishop, Head of Lower School, Fay School; Irene Papadopoulos, Boston University Doctoral Candidate/Fay School Counseling Intern

S1 Roxbury rocks!
Documentation can be an arduous process at best. Join me as I share some simplified ways (down and dirty) to document. I have some suggestions that may organize and simplify your job and at the same time increase your efficiency.
Presenter: Leah Milcowitz-Stancil, Director of Roxbury Academic Support Program, Cheshire Academy

S2 The kitchen table approach: From appetizer to dessert
What is the best part of any meal? Appetizers and dessert, of course! We will look at how we start and finish the academic lives of our Academic Skills Center (ASC) students while they are at Miss Hall’s School (MHS). The ASC at Miss Hall’s helps students “launch” with two key collaborations between ASC students and learning specialists: a fall letter to MHS teachers and a spring learning profile for college.
Presenters: Fredi Hungate, Learning Specialist; Vaunie Graulty, Director of Academic Skills Center, Miss Hall’s School

2:45 – 4:00 Session II

C5 Making the grade: An integrated approach to student success
The Academic Support Services and Counseling teams work closely together to support the needs of the whole child. Come learn about our model combining advising, counseling services and academic supports to meet the individual needs of our students. We will share information regarding our advising program and how our Enrichment Center functions within the school. This session will be discussion-based so participants can share their own program strengths and walk away with a handful of ideas for implementation at their own schools.
Presenters: Lesley Colognesi, Director of Academic Support Services; Tara Paulauskas, School Counselor, Beaver Country Day School

C6 Who’s your client? Building effective bridges through the PR work of school counseling
As school counselors, we always put students first. However, as the roles and responsibilities of school counselors change, we have a new clientele that we must recognize. Administrators, faculty, advisors and parents all have a role in the students’ well-being. In a world where most of what counselors do appears to be “confidential,” how can we help educate others about our work? Learn how to identify who counselors’ “other” clients are and strategies to create effective partnerships with faculty, administrators, and parents on behalf of students.
Presenters: Tom Dukes, Clinical Faculty, Boston University’s School of Education; Elyse Carlin, School Counselor, Fay School; Sarah Crosley, Boston University/Fay School Counseling Intern

C7 Influencing the culture and climate of schools through a whole-child lens: Integrating counseling expertise into every facet of school programs
This session will focus on the broad programmatic impact school counselors can have in building a healthy school culture and climate in which children and adolescents can grow. As the resident expert in child and adolescent development, the school counselor’s role should include influencing academic and co-curricular programs so that they are sensitive to the developmental realities and needs of all students. In a panel discussion, come see how one Director of School Counseling takes on the role of consultant and direct service provider in coordinated and integrated student life, residential life, chapel, and character and health curricula and programs.
Presenters: Christopher Schoberl, Academic Dean; Andy Long, Director of Residential Life; Jennifer Taylor, Director of School Counseling; Scott LeBrun, Dean of Students; Alex Steinert-Evoy, Chapel Coordinator, Fay School

L3 Avoiding the book report: GARP
Want to help your students get away from writing summary after summary? Come learn more about The Great American Reading Project (GARP). Designed for fourth, fifth and sixth graders, GARP will help you strengthen your current independent reading program. Created in 2000, this innovative concept is designed to challenge and enrich your students’ reading experience. Using a list of 150 books, students use an interactive website to read their way across the United States. Reading from Maine to Hawaii, students create not only strong written work, but will combine art, science, geography and math to share their knowledge of both the books and the states they are set in. In the era of assessing multiple intelligences, this program is not to be missed.
Presenter: James Ramsdell, Lower School English Teacher/Director of Lower School Admission, Fay School

L4 Motivation for reading: Keeping the momentum
The vast majority of young children enter school fully expecting that they will soon be proficient readers. In the early grades they happily engage in literacy tasks, believing wholeheartedly that their effort will, indeed, pay off. Unfortunately, for far too many students, intrinsic motivation for reading and other literacy activities declines by the later elementary grades and is drastically reduced by the middle school years. Many struggling readers, motivated by a desire to avoid embarrassment or reduce feelings of failure actively avoid engagement in reading. In this workshop, participants will learn about the research that sheds light on the developmental trajectory of motivation for reading and will be introduced to teaching methods that have shown promise in helping students to maintain or regain high levels of motivation.
Presenter: Susan Dougherty, Instructor and Doctoral Candidate, Boston University

S3 To be or not to be: Predictors for student success in your school environment
Get involved in your school’s admission process to improve student outcomes. This workshop will examine the importance of a thorough documentation review prior to admission; helpful suggestions on knowing what you are looking for, and how to read between the lines will be discussed. Why it is so crucial for the learning specialist to have some onus in the admission process will also be addressed. Bring questions and comments to share.
Presenter: Leslie Barry, Roxbury Support Program Team, Cheshire Academy

S4 All roads lead to the learning center
Based on the Fay School model, this session will investigate integrated learning resources with special emphasis on the role of the Learning Specialist as a catalyst for institutional change and as a resource for all students.
Presenters: Kara Ashley, Learning Specialist, Director Fay Summer Institute, President, Northeast Association of Learning Specialists (NEALS); Angela Arigoni-Mesfioui, Director Fay School Learning Center

S5 Diligence, competence, and independence
The Language Program at Trinity-Pawling School is part of the English department. It is designed to help students with mild dyslexia attain a strong grasp of the English language and become mainstreamed, college-bound students. What makes the program unique is that it has its own instructional curriculum. The teachers in the program do not help students with their own subjects; rather, they follow a systematic course of direct, explicit instruction in language skills. The success of the program depends largely on being in the context of a single-sex, highly structured school that offers a full range of support to all its students.
Presenters: MacGregor Robinson, Director of Admission: Helen Hauser, Director of the Language Program, Trinity-Pawling School

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Fay School’s 4th Annual Research into Practice Conference
Best Practices of Integrated Programs in School Counseling,
Literacy Development and Learning Support Services

May 8, 2006 – 9:30-4:00
Fay School, 48 Main Street, Southborough, MA 01772

Cost: $15 per person - $10 per person for groups of 5 or more
$10 for NEALS menbers
BU Graduate Students $5 per person

Please make checks payable to: Fay School
Payment by purchase order is welcome too.

Please complete one registration form per person.

It is important to pre-register for sessions. You may indicate 1st and 2nd choices for each session and for affinity lunches.

Mail or fax to:
Sarah Rogers-McMillan
Head of Upper School
Fay School
48 Main Street,
Southborough, MA 01772

Fax: 508-460-0842

Email alternative: Send your lunch and session preferences together with your registration information to smcmillan@fayschool.org.

We will gather on Monday, May eighth, at Fay School. Our topic will be Sharing our Strengths: Programs that Work. We will hear presentations from our colleagues about effective program design, innovative methods of service delivery, and unique characteristics of individual programs. The format for the day will be a departure from our usual meetings in that we will meet in small groups for forty-five minute periods.

The date of our spring meeting also coincides with Fay’s annual Research Into Practice (RIP) conference. This year’s focus will be counseling models in independent schools. The organizers of RIP have agreed to allow cross-registration between the conferences. More information about the RIP conference will appear on this site in the near future.

If you are interested in submitting a proposal for a presentation, please follow the submission guidelines below and send them to Kara Ashley on or before February 28th, 2006. Submissions will be reviewed by the conference committee and presentors will be notified by March 10th, 2006.

Submission Guidelines:

1.Please Indicate topic thread:

• Effective program design
• Innovative methods of service delivery
• Unique characteristics of individual programs
• Other

2. Name of presentor(s)

3. Format of presentation (lecture, workshop, panel)

4. Title of presentation

5. Presentation description (100 words max)