Dear OWP Teacher Consultants--

I have recently attended two meetings with OSU Writing
Project directors and Oklahoma State Department of
Education coordinators.  We are working together to
plan some conferences for special education teachers
to help them become "highly qualified" under No Child
Left Behind.

They can become highly qualified in two ways--one is
to take the certification test in their core subject
area; the other is to take 40 hours of staff
development training in their core subject
area--language arts, math, science, and social
studies.  The challenge is that their deadline is
February!

I have had requests from a couple of districts for
teacher consultants who could come in and prepare
their special ed teachers to take the state
certification tests in the core areas.  Would any of
you be willing to do this?  Since I never had to take
the language arts certification test, I wouldn't know
where to begin with this, but those of you who have
taken the test, especially recently, might be able to
help them prepare.

My next proposal is more exciting:  The State
Department is hiring OWP and OSUWP to provide
professional development for these special ed
teachers.  The plan at this point is to offer five
different conferences on Saturdays at five different
locations in the state--central, northeast, northwest,
southeast, southwest.  The state department will find
the venues for us.  We are also planning to offer some
Tuesday night workshops, 3 hours each, between
December and February.  We have a potential audience
of 1400 special ed teachers, so I will need 10 or 15
presenters!  By the way, these will mostly be
secondary teachers, since most elementary special ed
teachers are already "highly qualified."

Before these conferences begin, we would like to have
a joint meeting with all the OWP/ OSUWP Teacher
Consultants for a coaching session in either December
or November.  Britton Gildersleeve, OSUWP Director,
and I think we need a couple of hours to work with you
on the specifics of the SDE Special Ed HOUSSE details.
 You will need to polish your presentations/ demos to
reflect the emphasis on special needs students: more
interaction, differentiated learning, multiple
intelligences, etc. I don’t think this will be a
problem since these are the basics of most Writing
Project inservice.  We will have a few special ed TCs
there to work with you on this.

At $100 an hour, you will have an opportunity to make
lots of money if you commit to present at some or all
of these conferences.    It is a phenomenal
opportunity for OWP and a great chance for us to
network with other writing project teachers across the
state.

Please contact me right away if you are interested in
doing this.  I'll want you to e-mail me your workshop
title and program description.  Then we'll help to be
sure you can tweek your presentation for the special
education teacher audience.

Thanks for your help with this.

Janis






Janis Cramer
Co-Director of Inservice
Oklahoma Writing Project
"Teachers Teaching Teachers"
820 Van Vleet Oval
University of Oklahoma
Phone and Fax (405) 495-4903
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