Neil graced the cover of American Teacher Magazine for his stewardship of an Annenberg grant funded arts education program that married interdisciplinary Humanities planning with team teaching and teaching artists from such esteemed arts organizations as New York City Opera, Guggenheim Museum, and Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Neil was Lead Mentor of Region 9 in New York City and designed and facilitated professional development for 40 master teachers/mentors while he mentored first year teaches in 15 varied schools. He was extensively trained by the nationally renowned experts at the University of California Santa Cruz's New Teacher Induction program and presented at their National Conference on the topic of Mentoring Resistant Teachers.

Neil taught Global History, Economics, English, and Arts Appreciation for ten years in New York City before becoming a staff developer.

Description:

Professional Learning Communities That Work - Empowering your teachers to work together towards the shared goal of improving student learning and aligning their instruction to your school's vision and mission is essential for a well developed school. Establishing professional learning communities that incorporate protocols and structures to facilitate collegial conversations and shared learnings creates self-reflective pedagogues and lifelong learners. PLC's also increase teacher professionalism and job satisfaction. The PLC process facilitates the development of your school's instructional culture and empowers all stakeholders. The workshop begins with an awareness of the The Seven Stages of Professional Learning Teams, a self-assessment as to where your PLC's currently fall, and a goal setting protocol to move them forward. The workshop can also be differentiated for teacher leaders and administration.

Building Capacity Through Instructional Rounds - Richard Elmore's Instructional Rounds Process empowers teachers to identify and hone best practices across content areas and grade levels. It improves pedagogy and student learning while transforming a school's culture and growing a Professional Learning Community. This workshop familiarizes participants with the theory behind this reflective group practice and the protocols to make it a reality. Participants will have an opportunity to practice low inference objective data collection and effective debrief procedures.

Building Capacity Through Effective Mentoring and Coaching - This workshop explores various ways to create pedagogues that are self reflective, lifelong learners and how this process can positively impact your school culture. To strengthen collaborative partnerships with both veteran and beginning teachers, various coaching and mentoring strategies will be discussed. Methodologies in objective data collection and its subsequent analysis will be shared. Instructive, collaborative, and facilitative mentor language along with low inference objective data collection tools will be incorporated to help structure debrief conversations and promote teacher growth.