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ECC Specialties

Our Areas
of Focus

ASD training

Teacher leaders are key to the implementation and success of all school-based initiatives. We Support and develop schools, leaders, and teachers through our unique areas of focus. 

 Click on a topic below to read more 

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This is the space to share a review from one of the business's clients or customers.

This is the space to share a review from one of the business's clients or customers.

Building Leadership Capacity

For schools to thrive and move forward in achieving their goals, it is crucial to provide leaders, educators, and support staff with professional learning experiences that are designed intentionally to keep professionals up-to-date and focused on improved student learning. We will:

  • Unpack the school’s mission, beliefs, goals and strategies

  • Investigate models of effective professional learning

  • Draft a mission statement for professional learning within

    the school’s unique context

  • Establish the basis for funding within the school’s unique

    context

  • Establish or evaluate professional learning guidelines for

    the school’s unique context

  • Look at systems for staff to apply for professional learning

  • Evaluate the funding mechanism for professional learning

  • Investigate goals-setting processes for designing an

    overall professional learning plan for the school

  • Establish processes for individual professional learning

    plans for staff

  • Explore ways to evaluate the impact of professional

    learning on student growth

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Working as a connected “Community of Practice” brings a change of mindset to a school and the way in which it works together as a community. We will:

  • Investigate protocols to identify and focus the schools

    “big” goals

  • Identify who is in the community

  • Refine community groups

  • Articulate the desired community culture

  • Craft “big goals”

  • Establish data collection protocols

  • Define indicators of success and evaluation mechanisms

Establishing a Community of Practice
Crafting Intentional and Measurable Goal Setting

To achieve success in identified areas of improvement, it is important to be intentional about goal-setting. To ensure intentionality, we will:

  • Identify a problem of practice

  • Identify the desired results

  •  Explore protocols to gather data

  • Craft SMART goals

  • Establish indicators of success

  • Evaluate the results

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Building Effective and Productive Teams

Some teams work collaboratively and effectively to attain goals that focus on improved student learning. Other teams need support in this area. We will:

  • Identify characteristics of effective teams

  • Identify the characteristics of effective team leaders

  • Investigate protocols that ensure common goals and processes

  • Develop a tool to assess the effectiveness of the team

  • Investigate strategies that build team trust

Building and Sustaining a Standards-Based Learning Systems

It is important for schools to establish what an effective standards-based learning system looks like within the unique context of their school. We will focus on the following aspects to articulate a complete system:

  • The community environment

  • The needed support mechanisms

  • The curriculum infrastructure

  • The assessment framework

  • The instructional pedagogy

  • An ongoing school improvement process

  • Foundational documents

It is important to triangulate data to ensure an accurate picture within any school setting, allowing for improved student learning and achievement results. We will:
 

Investigate current data collection practice

  • Set the school’s data vision

  • Adapt goal setting procedures

  • Establish procedures for analysis of data

  • Unpack strategies for improvement

Collecting and Analyzing Data

For teams within a community to be effective, it is important for leaders to be skilled facilitators as they lead their groups. Facilitators will learn to:

  • Discover possible team characteristics

  • Identify individual team “characters”

  • Develop effective learning-focused agendas

  • Build a repertoire of strategies for facilitation

  • Develop an effect assessment tool to measure a team effectiveness

Developing Effective Facilitation Skills

Curriculum review is a crucial ongoing process as schools strive to stay current in their implementation of current practice to achieve optimal student achievement. To build an effective process for curriculum review, we will:

  • Explore models of curriculum review

  • Identify desired results

  • Articulate the current state

  • Investigate current trends

  • Define the decision-making process

  • Unpack standards

  • Build an implementation Plan

  • Develop indicators of success

  • Design an evaluation process

Building Effective Curriculum Review Processes

Designing well-crafted units of learning that articulate the school’s curriculum is the key to a quality learning experience for students. We will:

  • Unpack the elements of “backwards design”

  • Investigate the qualities of authentic assessment

  • Understand the use of Formative assessment

  • Design authentic summative assessments

  • Investigate models of curriculum mapping

Designing Units and Assessments

For schools to thrive and move forward in achieving their goals, it is crucial to provide leaders, educators, and support staff with professional learning experiences that are designed intentionally to keep professionals up-to-date and focused on improved student learning. We will:

  • Unpack the school’s mission, beliefs, goals and strategies

  • Investigate models of effective professional learning

  • Draft a mission statement for professional learning within the school’s unique context

  • Establish the basis for funding within the school’s unique context

  • Establish or evaluate professional learning guidelines for the school’s unique context

  • Look at systems for staff to apply for professional learning

  • Evaluate the funding mechanism for professional learning

  • Investigate goals-setting processes for designing an overall professional learning plan for the school

  • Establish processes for individual professional learning plans for staff

  • Explore ways to evaluate the impact of professional learning on student growth

Building Strategic, Systemic and Sustained Professional Learning Programs

As schools lead up to accreditation, or just want to review their program, it may be helpful to have an outside set of eyes review the schools program. We will:

  • Reflect and evaluate current status of foundational documents

  • Reflect and evaluate the systems that support standards based learning

  • Develop a plan for enhancement

Evaluating Programs and Audits

  • The Educational Ecosystem

  • The Board as Leaders of the school community

  • Setting the culture from the top

  • Fiduciary Responsibility

  • Principles of Effective Governance

  • Roles and Responsibilities of an Effective Board

  • Hiring the Head of School

  • Relationship Between the Board and the Head of Schoo

  • Strategic Stewardship of the school in Operations and Finance

  • Risk Management and Risk Register - Strategic Planning and Goal Setting - Overcoming Biases

 Board of Trustees Training

The transition to university by students of international schools can be a challenge. By partnering with schools, parents, and the students themselves, we will provide strategies and programming to address:

  • Understanding repatriation: challenges and opportunities

  • Cultural reIntegration strategies

  • College preparation for repatriating students

  • Adjustment to college-life

  • Support systems: building networks for repatriating students

  • Academic continuity: bridging gaps in education

  • Emotional and mental health considerations

  • Engaging Parents and Families in the Repatriation Process

Repatriation Guidance for College-Bound Students

These topics provide a comprehensive framework for international school administrators to enhance student well-being in a global context.

  • Building adjustment programs for educational institutions

  • Understanding global well-being: definitions and frameworks 

  • Cultural sensitivity in and out of educational settings 

  • Building resilience in international students

  • Creating inclusive school environments

  • Collaborating with families and communities

  • Implementing well-being programs and Interventions

  • Monitoring and evaluating well-being Initiatives

  • Building and assessing global citizenship and cultural competence

 

 

Promoting Student Well-being in a Global Context

To build capacity for this, I offer a number of workshops.

  • Cultural Awareness

    • This presentation provides an opportunity to consider the many aspectsof culture and the ways in which we can make a difference in the lives of our students. It presents case-studies and delves into the best ways to ensure that students reach their personal and academic potential.

  • Supportive strategies for EAL/D Learners

    • This is a practical and engaging workshop which presents teachers with an understanding of the scaffolding and teaching practices necessary to enable EAL/D students to access the curriculum. Teachers are taken through the vital components of teaching EALD students in a mainstream classroom. The strategies are highly supportive of all learners but are crucial for English language learners. This presentation is highly regarded and always garners excellent reviews for its engaging and practical nature.

  • Aligning teaching strategies with the Australian Curriculum to support EAL/D learners

    • This series of workshops is aimed at teachers of EALD students from prep - Year 2, Year 3 - Year 6, and Year 7 - Year 10 who are studying the Australian Curriculum (AC). It analyses the pedagogical, language and cultural considerations that need to be taken into account when teaching English, History, Maths and Science in each particular cohort.

    • The workshop introduces resources developed by ACARA and includes a guided session on ways to make the resources work within teachers’ own contexts and classrooms. It includes practical examples and opportunities for discussion.

Supporting Schools and Teachers to Understand and Cater to the Needs of Their EAL-D Students
Supporting Schools and Teachers to Understand and Cater to the Needs of Their EAL-D Students

  • Workshop: The tools of effective writing 1: Nominalisation

    • An understanding of nominalisation enables students to write in a more academic and sophisticated way. This session describes the process of nominalisation and outlines the ways it can be used to improve student outcomes. This type of explicit language teaching, while beneficial for all students, is crucial for EAL/D learners.

    • Teachers gain an understanding of how to use nominalisation and how to teach it through observing a number of practical examples of teaching and learning activities.

    • This is a very practical session, and teachers leave with examples and strategies that can be employed immediately in the classroom.

  •  Workshop: The tools of effective writing 2: Noun Groups

    • Mastery over the noun group is one sure way to academic success and improved student outcomes. This session provides teachers with a deep understanding of the form and function of the noun group through engagement in teaching and learning activities and examples. This type of explicit language teaching, while beneficial for all students, is crucial for EAL/D learners.

    • This is a very practical session, and teachers leave with examples and strategies that can be employed immediately in the classroom.

Aligning Pedagogy for EAL-D Students with Literacy for all Students. 

Align curriculum with AERO Social Studies standards

  • Identify key themes and skills in AERO SS framework

  • Ensure vertical alignment across grade levels

Integrate inquiry-based learning

  • Develop questions that provoke critical thinking

  • Facilitate student-led research and investigation

Assessment and feedback aligned with AERO standards

  • Create rubrics that reflect AERO competencies

  • Provide timely feedback to support student growth

Professional development for teachers

  • Train on best practices for AERO implementation

  • Collaborate on interdisciplinary units using AERO standards

AERO (American Education Reaches Out) Social Studies Standards and Implementations

Dimension 1: Developing Questions and Planning Inquiries

  • Design compelling and supporting questions

  • Encourage student curiosity and ownership of learning

Dimension 2: Applying Disciplinary Tools and Concepts

  • Focus on civics, history, geography, and economics

  • Teach students to use tools like maps, primary sources, and data analysis

Dimension 3: Evaluating Sources and Using Evidence

  • Guide students in evaluating the credibility of sources

  • Help students construct arguments using evidence-based reasoning

Dimension 4: Communicating Conclusions and Taking Informed

  • Action

  • Support students in presenting findings through multiple formats (e.g., presentations, reports)

  • Foster active citizenship by planning real-world applications

C3 Inquiry Arc

AI for Personalized Learning Plans

  • Use AI to analyze student performance data

  • Create tailored learning pathways for students with diverse needs

Automated Feedback

  • Employ AI for real-time feedback on formative assessments

  • Identify common misconceptions and adjust instruction dynamically

AI for Instructional Planning

  • Utilize AI to generate lesson ideas aligned with standards

  • Recommend differentiated resources for diverse learning styles

Assessment and Data Analysis

  • Use AI tools to aggregate assessment results

  • Predict student outcomes and areas for intervention

Integration of AI as a Tool for Planning, Instruction, and Feedback

Backward Design Approach

  • Start by identifying desired learning outcomes

  • Develop assessments that measure mastery of objectives

Incorporation of Cross-Disciplinary Skills

  • Integrate literacy and critical thinking into unit plans

  • Connect unit topics to broader real-world applications

Scaffolding and Differentiation

  • Design lessons with varying levels of support for diverse learners

  • Use formative assessments to adjust instruction as needed

Project-Based Learning Opportunities

  • Include long-term projects that encourage problem-solving and collaboration

  • Align projects with standards to ensure relevance and rigor

Unit Design

  • Sessions can be planned to meet the needs of schools and can vary in length from an introductory 90-minute session through to a whole day workshop. Workshops are typically capped at 25 teachers per session, but I am happy to negotiate with schools to come up with the best solution for their individual professional learning needs.

  • Schools may request tailored or standard workshops at times which suit their calendars and needs. Student Free Days are a very cost-effective way to provide targeted and consistent professional learning to all staff - please note that these need to be booked well in advance.

  • Sessions can be combined to make up half or full day timeslots and can be timed according to specific needs and requests.

Tailored Workshops
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