Info Update

• Dr. Z-Coe's Corner
• Special Message from your Facilitator Support Specialist
• National Women's History Month
• 7th Annual Literacy Symposium!
• Book Club Underway!
• Summer Registration Reminder
• Bi-monthly Facilitator Discussion Topics
• Facilitator Quick Reference
• Lagging/Non-responsive Students & Quality Assurance
• REESOL, FOR-PD & Facilitator Summer Call
• ACT, FOR-PD & Facilitator Summer Call
• Student Access Denied & Course Extensions

ABC's of Facilitation

• Facilitation Resource of the Month
• What's My Role?
• Dear Felicity,

Chatterbox

• Community Comments
• Monthly Online Chat
• Future Chats

Dr. Z-Coe's Corner

Dear FOR-PD Facilitator:

I hope that all is well with you. Every month I write this column I come to the same conclusion: time is going by far too fast. I hope that all of you are having a successful FCAT time and that you are all planning to do something soon to celebrate the completion of 2005 FCAT. FOR-PD continues to grow. Last week we were notified by the FL DOE that FOR-PD was named in the REESOL plans for reading endorsement. FOR-PD will also help meet the needs of alternatively certified teachers. With summer around the corner we are anticipating servicing many more teachers.

In our efforts to meet demands from the districts and the Department of Education, we have been doing much quality assurance during the past few weeks. As a result, we have been communicating more and more with you and also with the participants. With your help, we have been able to assist various participants who had been falling behind in the course. In addition, we received information from many of you about the status of inactive participants in your sections. Thank you for your help! Thank you for all you do to motivate, instruct, facilitate, and monitor teachers' learning and success in the course. The hundreds of e-mails we have been exchanging with facilitators and participants the past few weeks provide additional evidence on the commitment of this collaborative team—thank you for your commitment, time, and responsiveness!

As we continue to focus on professional development, I wanted to share with you some principles I have been reminding myself of lately:

Effective professional development is a process which promotes participation by:

• Involving all partners at all times
• We continue to involve all partners in the FOR-PD efforts to serve the needs of our audiences. Thank you for continuing to share with us your thoughts, reflections, concerns, and suggestions. We value your feedback and are quick to act upon it.
• Seeking, valuing, and using participant input
• We continue to seek your feedback in many ways—through group and individual e-mails, the Facilitator Only Discussion Board, letters, the FFF, telephone conversations, and surveys. Your feedback helps us serve and support you better. Your feedback helps us communicate certain messages to the districts and to participants. Thank you for the ongoing communication you are having with us on various aspects of facilitation.
• Using clear communication
• We continue to strive for clarity in our communications with you and our other audiences. We have spent much time this semester on making sure that guidelines, expectations, policies, and procedures are communicated clearly to you. I know that there's always room for improvement; we vow to continue to do whatever possible to ensure clear communication with you.

In this month's issue you will find an announcement about UCF's "Celebrate Literacy Symposium." Our keynote speaker will be Dr. Donna Alvermann, distinguished reading researcher from University of Georgia. We also plan to have various concurrent sessions on content reading and literacy. The event is free to all educators. We hope to see you at the symposium. For more information, please visit: http://www.itrc.ucf.edu/litsym

Thank you for your time, efforts, and leadership with the FOR-PD course. I wish you continued success. Remember that we are here to support you and help you in your facilitation. Please feel free to contact me in case you have any comments or questions at vzygouri@mail.ucf.edu or (407) 207-7296.

Regards,

Vicky Zygouris-Coe, Ph.D.
Principal Investigator, FOR-PD
vzygouri@mail.ucf.edu

Special Message from your Facilitator Support Specialist

Hi Everyone!

As many of you know from your email inboxes lately, if you are a spring facilitator, you have received many emails from FOR-PD in the recent weeks. Some of these are about FOR-PD policy, while others are about quality assurance information. We realize that many of you do the very best you can for your participants and even go above and beyond the call of duty for a FOR-PD facilitator. We applaud your efforts. Unfortunately, there are a few facilitators out there who are not doing their job to the best of their ability. Participants are slipping through the cracks and finishing courses without anyone's knowledge. In light of this fact, we have "upgraded" our efforts to keep participants in the courses by doubling our quality assurance and communication efforts with facilitators.

To those of you who are doing an outstanding job in all regards of facilitating, thank you and please keep up the good work! Look to our emails as an indication of our records and compare them with yours. If you notice discrepancies, let us know right away so we may update our databases. We sincerely appreciate all you do for the teachers in Florida. Thank you for a job well done!

To those of you who need an extra push in some facilitation areas, remember that you are the key to participant success. Your efforts are the most important indicator of participant success. We want to increase communication between facilitators and the FOR-PD office. Please keep us informed of your participant status and any changes within your course. The increased communication will surely benefit all involved. We know that several participants drop or do not complete the course for reasons beyond our control—let's focus our efforts on those who can do it with a little extra push from us.

Communication is one of the keys to effective teamwork. With the exception of several announcements, this entire FFF is dedicated to the necessary teamwork between facilitators and the FOR-PD office, focusing on increased communication. Throughout the newsletter, we will attempt to clarify policy for you in order to give you a more clear understanding of the FOR-PD project, participant requirements, and what our office is doing in response to several issues that have come to light recently. We hope this increased communication from our office will better assist you in your work with the participants and let you see our office as part of your team in our mutual goal of helping teachers across the state succeed in our course.

I love the Community Comment section this time because it points out the value of facilitators, directly from the mouth of a participant! Thank you needs to be said to all facilitators for their work in helping participants complete the course. You efforts are so very critical. Thanks also for your attention and understanding with the changes that are occurring. Together, as a team, we can make this project even more of a success!

Sincerely,

Wendy

Wendy L. Bedwell
Facilitator Support Specialist
FOR-PD

The 2005 Women's History Month theme, "Women Change America," honors and recognizes the role of American women in transforming culture, history and politics as leaders, writers, scientists, educators, politicians, artists, historians, and informed citizens.

"Women Change America" also celebrates the myriad [of] ways in which the spirit, courage, and contributions of American women have added to the vitality, richness, and diversity of American life.

The National Women's History Project web site has a great deal of information that you may find interesting, including a list of all women who have been honored by National Women's History Week and National Women's History Month. The list is a series of links—you can click on each woman's name to find out more about her life and contributions.

Matt Wiggins
12443 Research Parkway, Suite 402
Orlando, FL 32826

We look forward to your participation! See you on April 1, 2005 at UCF!

Book Club Underway!

The FOR-PD Facilitator Book Club has begun! In our "For Facilitator Only" course discussion area, we have a new topic called Book Discussion.

Join us as we explore a model of professional development specifically for those who teach literacy to teachers. Systems for Change in Literacy Education by Carol Lyons and Gay Su Pinnell will be our featured professional development resource for the spring semester. There will be a special discussion area in the For Facilitator Only Discussion Board related to this book. For each chapter, the Facilitator Leadership Board will provide a synopsis and thought-provoking questions related to the job of a FOR-PD facilitator.

The book is organized around four sections:

• Developing Teachers' Conceptual Knowledge and Skills
• Implementing High-Quality Professional Development
• Enabling Professional Development through Coaching
• Supporting Lasting Change

Section 1 establishes the foundation of the book. The section opens with a discussion on adult learning and literacy and explores the components that ensure a sound, pedagogical framework built on constructivist principles. Information regarding factors associated with developing a community of learners in a collaborative environment, the reading-writing process, and key points about teaching literacy are also discussed.

Section 2 outlines specifics to assist in organizing and implementing a literacy professional development program, including classroom innovations and teaching techniques.

Section 3 focuses on coaching, detailing strategies and techniques to maximize the coaching experience for both staff developers and teachers. This section includes discussions designed to augment skills such as analysis of instructional effectiveness, assessment of literacy teaching, coaching to improve pedagogical style, and reflection of organizational structures and classroom practices.

Section 4 discusses issues and situations relevant to professional development. Chapters within this section detail methods to assist in teachers' continued learning and research, strategies for overcoming barriers to effective professional development, program design for both classroom and school levels, and the contribution staff developers make to augment teacher education and school effectiveness.

As a reminder, below is a schedule of when each pair of chapters will be discussed in the For Facilitator Only Discussion Board. Don't worry if you don't have the book—members of our Facilitator Leadership Board will post summaries of the main points of each pair of chapters every week. You can read the summaries and contribute based on what you read as well as your experiences. We look forward to discussing literacy professional development with you!

Facilitator Discussion Schedule

Summer Registration Reminder

Spread the word—summer registration starts on March 14, 2005! Below is the summer schedule for your information.

Bi-Monthly Facilitator Discussion Topics

The latest discussion topics:

The topic for Feb. 28 - Mar. 11 is ideas for dealing with students who are lagging behind, but give you the impression they want to finish the course. What are some ways you can handle this situation? What have you done in the past? This should be a really good topic to generate some discussion because I know many of you have faced this situation. Please share your experiences with others as we have several facilitators who have never facilitated before and they could benefit from your wisdom! This topic will begin on Feb. 28—look in the "For Facilitator Only" discussion area for the new topic.

The topic for March 11 - 27 is 101 praises for facilitators to use!! We all need a little praise now and then, right? Our participants do as well! At the spring facilitator meeting we talked about giving praise and just praise. We often include our praise with other information or after we have had something negative to say. Participants like to receive praise just for the sake of a little praise, so let's generate some general praise to give participants. I know all of you do a great job of praising your participants so let's post our thoughts in an attempt to generate a 101 Praises for Facilitators to Use list! Can we do it? Look in the "For Facilitator Only" discussion area for the new topic. If this discussion is generating a great deal of interest, we will extend the discussion past March 27. I look forward to reading your praises!

We also welcome your ideas for new bi-monthly topics! Have something you are particularly interested in? Is there something you recently learned at a conference that you feel will generate discussion from other facilitators? Feel free to share your topic ideas with us—just email forpdfac@mail.ucf.edu. We look forward to seeing you online!

Facilitator Quick Reference

Many facilitators at the Spring meeting expressed interest in a Quick Reference table of some issues that facilitators commonly face as well as the appropriate response and a guide to an inappropriate response. You ask and we deliver! We hope you enjoy the table below. This will also be available in the For Facilitator Only Discussion area under "Help, Hints, and Advice."

Lagging/Non-responsive Students & Quality Assurance

All facilitators are familiar with students who do not keep up with the pace of the course. Some never really get started—others start but fall behind the rest of the class. These students are termed as lagging behind. Non-responsive students are those that facilitators try repeatedly to contact with no response. Our research has shown that without immediate intervention, more often than not, these participants do not finish the course.

In light of this fact, FOR-PD has instituted a new wave of quality assurance efforts. We are checking with all participants who are behind in the first few weeks of the course, whether they have started or not. Our goal is to try and get to these students as early as possible to bring them back on track. We want facilitators to communicate as much as possible with these participants—we know many of you constantly try to contact participants and do not receive any word back. We want to work together with facilitators to increase our communication efforts. We will send all facilitators an email of who we have contacted. We want facilitators to send our office a list of any non-responsive students so that we may attempt to contact them again. If we work together, we are confident we can bring more students back into the course.

As mentioned above, we are increasing our efforts in terms of quality assurance checks. Our efforts involve the following:

•  Email to all participants who are lagging behind indicating:
  •  where they are in the course
  •  where they should be based on the course schedule
  •  an offer of help to get them started and
  •  a contact within FOR-PD
    
• Email to all facilitators indicating:
  •  percentages of students who are behind, have not started, or are on schedule
  •  which students have been contacted by our office
  •  any results from those contacts
  •  the course start/end date according to our database
  •  a request for the facilitator to contact those students

We understand that most facilitators do an excellent job of staying in contact with their participants and some facilitators are even more up-to-date with the statistics of their students than our office staff. The goal of these emails is not to embarrass facilitators. The goal is to help increase communication between our staff and our facilitators. We want all facilitators to look carefully at the list of students we have contacted and give us any updates they may have from those students. We also want to inform facilitators of the start/end dates. Working together, we can have the best information about where our participants stand and the best chance to bring them back into the course. Thank you for your efforts and continued support of the participants enrolled in the FOR-PD course!

REESOL, FOR-PD & Facilitator Summer Call

Recently a memo was issued from the Florida Department of Education regarding the REESOL (see below for highlights of the memo). FOR-PD thought it would be best to group ESOL participants together in cohorts for the FOR-PD course. We plan to do this starting this summer. As such, we will need several facilitators who are ESOL certified to facilitate those sections. Any certified facilitator who is interested in taking on a course this summer, please contact Wendy at the FOR-PD office (forpdfac@mail.ucf.edu) as soon as possible. Also, if you happen to know of any ESOL trained teachers who have taken the FOR-PD course and would make excellent facilitators, please let us know. We are opening up our facilitator training course this summer. Thank you for your interest, and we look forward to hearing from you!

—memo from Florida Department of Education http://info.fldoe.org/dscgi/ds.py/Get/File-2802/reesol.pdf

On March 4, 2005 the Florida Department of Education announced the Reading Endorsement—ESOL Professional Development for teachers who have the 300 hour ESOL Endorsement training.

Increasing the number of teachers endorsed or certified in English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) who may also be high qualified to teach reading will assist the state in fulfilling the Florida Department of Education's Strategic Imperative 1: Increase the supply of effective teachers.

Last year the Department of Education completed a Reading/ESOL Endorsement Crosswalk to determine what additional hours of reading inservice were needed to complete the Reading Endorsement for teachers who had finished the 300 hours of ESOL inservice training. These teachers are eligible for 80 hours of credit towards the Reading Endorsement. The Florida Department of Education, in collaboration with Florida Literacy and Reading Excellence (FLaRE) have created a third path to the reading endorsement and developed a Reading Endorsement Bundle (REESOL). The other two paths are completion of the district Reading Endorsement add-on plan or completion of fifteen hours with submission of transcripts directly to the Department of Education certification office. ALL three paths will result in the Reading Endorsement.

The REESOL bundle is add-on training that will cover all of the remaining competencies needed to fulfill the requirement for the Reading Endorsement.

The REESOL training will be available (but not required) for all teachers who have the ESOL Endorsement due to completing the 300 hours of ESOL inservice training. It is advised that if teachers are already completing the district reading add-on endorsement plan, they should continue their pursuit of the Reading Endorsement through that path.

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Facilitation Resource of the Month

This month's facilitation resource is about building online community. What does that have to do with teamwork? Well, quite a bit in my opinion. We have looked at facilitators as a team and now I want us to look at each member of your course as a team. Think about that when reading this book review.

The article this month is a book review of Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace: Effective Strategies for the Online Classroom. This is a very important book in the field of distance education, written by two very prominent researchers. RENA M. PALLOFF, Ph.D., is a managing partner of Crossroads Consulting Group. Additionally, she is an adjunct professor at John F. Kennedy University and the Organizational Design and Effectiveness program at the Fielding Institute. KEITH PRATT, Ph.D., is also a managing partner of Crossroads Consulting Group and an assistant professor and chair of the Management Information Systems program at Ottawa University.

This book is written for faculty, instructors, and trainers in any distance learning environment. The focus is to show how to create a virtual classroom environment helping students excel academically, while fostering a sense of community. Their approach is to use hands-on guides, illustrative case studies, vignettes and examples of successful online courses. The authors provide proven strategies for handling challenges that include:

• engaging students with subject matter,
• working with students who do not participate,
• understanding the signs of when a student is in trouble, and
• building online communities that accommodate personal interaction.

This review is written by Ramesh Sharma and is posted to the International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning site hosted by Athabasca University. Let's read this brief book review and talk about this a bit more. In the context of our focus on teamwork, what does building community in the online course have to do with that? How do our classes operate as a team? What aspects of teamwork from our previous discussions come through to you after reading about this book? Post your thoughts to the FFF topic within the For Faciliator Only Course Discussion Area. Look for the thread about "Building Community, Palloff and Pratt Style."

What's My Role?

We are still closing out some fall courses that started late in 2004. Facilitators in those sections need to remember course closing procedures—the most important is to send the FOR-PD office notification that the course is officially closed with a list of students who successfully completed the course and any requests for certificates of completion. Additionally, the invoice needs to be mailed/faxed to our office.

Other facilitators are nearing the midpoint of their course. At this point, facilitators know who is involved in the course and who never really started. Facilitators need to focus their efforts on keeping the students who actually began the course involved and motivated. Communication is a key in keeping everyone involved.

• Continue to reply to their postings in the discussion area. They need to see you are being an active participant. This is a common message from FOR-PD, but an important one none-the-less. If the facilitator begins to slack off, participants will follow. The facilitator needs to remain diligent in their efforts with participation and responding to participants.
• It is still important to contact anyone who falls behind. Our research shows that those who fall behind and are not contacted immediately often fail to finish the course. Contact participants as soon as they are behind. If you do not hear from them, contact our office after 2-3 repeated communication attempts.
• Keep the praise coming! Our upcoming bi-monthly discussion topic is 101 praises for facilitators to use. Send praise to participants to keep them motivated!

Do not hesitate to call me to discuss your course. If you are having any specific problems or need to chat about the course in general, please feel free to contact me (Wendy) at 407-207-7295.

Dear Felicity,

Dear Felicity,
There has been a great deal of increased communication between the FOR-PD office and facilitators. I have received many emails in the past few weeks that appear to be complaining about the job I am doing. What is the deal with these emails? I thought I was doing all I could for the participants, but now I am feeling very unappreciated and am even more irritated at the thought that FOR-PD does not approve of the job I am doing after I have thrown my heart and soul into facilitating.

- Down and Out

I was very apprehensive about taking this course,
due to my deficient technology skills, but thanks
to you and your guidance and your feedback, it
has been one of the greatest learning experiences
of my life.  The wealth of information that this
program has provided us with is truly amazing.  
The practical strategies that we can use directly
in our classrooms [are] invaluable.  Thanks, Joy,
for your leadership.  With one lesson to go, I can
see the end, but I can also appreciate how
important the facilitator is to the success of the
program.  I feel very lucky to have taken this
adventure with you.

-- Connie, Spring 2005

I wanted to post this comment because it is a clear indication from a PARTICIPANT about how important a facilitator is to participant success. Thank you, Joy, for sharing this comment and your continued support of FOR-PD participants! This comment is why all of us do what we do each day for FOR-PD. We are directly impacting teacher's lives, which in turn affects students. Thank you, thank you, thank you to all facilitators!!!

Do you have comments about the course? Have you received any comments from participants? We always look for feedback so send it our way. Email forpdfac@mail.ucf.edu with your stories!