Keynote Speakers

Friday, February 29, 2008

Dr. O. Raye Adkins

A Framework for Understanding Poverty

People in poverty face challenges virtually unknown to those in middle and upper classes – challenges from both obvious and hidden sources. The reality of being poor brings out a survival mentality, and turns attention away from opportunities taken for granted by everyone else.

Since programs and policies for assisting people – in education, social services, community development, law enforcement, health – are typically created and run by people from the middle class or wealth, a greater understanding of what it’s like to be poor will help  to better align those programs and policies with the people they’re designed to benefit.

Taken from A Framework for Understanding Poverty by Ruby K. Payne, Ph.D., www.ahaprocess.com

Join Dr. O. Raye Adkins, on Friday, February 29, 2008, for NACCTEP’s inspiring Opening Session as she discusses A Framework for Understanding Poverty. Dr. Adkins serves as a consultant for Dr. Ruby Payne’s aha Process, Inc., and regularly speaks for educational, corporate, youth, and community groups.

O. Raye Adkins of San Antonio, Texas, has been a professional educator since 1968.  She has served at the elementary, middle and high school levels as a teacher, curriculum consultant, central office administrator, elementary school principal, and at the university level as an adjunct professor.

Dr. Adkins' area of specialty is curriculum and instruction.  The elementary campus, while identified as economically disadvantaged, was repeatedly recognized for innovative programs and outstanding academic gains for all students under her leadership.  She is an advocate for reading and family literacy programs.  While principal, one of the campus reading and literacy initiatives was presented at the International Reading Association and published in the Reading Teacher in 1999.

The University of Texas at San Antonio recognized Dr. Adkins as Principal of the Year in 2000.  Currently, she is involved in educational research and serves as a consultant for aha! Process, Inc.

Saturday, March 1, 2008

Philip Uri Treisman

Philip Uri Treisman is professor of mathematics and of public affairs at The University of Texas at Austin. He is the founder and executive director of the University's Charles A. Dana Center, an organized research unit of the College of Natural Sciences. His research and professional interests include education policy, mathematics and science education, and community service and volunteerism.

Professor Treisman has received numerous honors and awards for his efforts to strengthen American education. For his research at the University of California at Berkeley on the factors that support high achievement among minority students in calculus, he received the 1987 Charles A. Dana Award for Pioneering Achievement in American Higher Education. In 1992, he was named a MacArthur Fellow. In December 1999, he was named as one of the outstanding leaders in higher education in the 20th century by the magazine Black Issues in Higher Education. In February 2006, he was named "2006 Scientist of the Year" by the Harvard Foundation of Harvard University for his outstanding contributions to mathematics.

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Sunday, March 2, 2008

Michael Johnston

Michael Johnston is the founder and principal of MESA (Mapleton Expeditionary School of the Arts), a 7-12 Gates funded small high school in north Denver. His experience teaching English in the Mississippi Delta with Teach For America led him to write his best selling education memoir, “In The Deep Heart’s Core”. Michael also co-founded New Leaders for New Schools, a national non-profit that recruits, prepares and places outstanding urban school leaders. He previously served as the principal of Joan Farley Academy, and the Marvin Foote Youth Detention Center. He is an adjunct professor of Education Law at the University of Denver and serves as an education advisor to state and federal political campaigns around the country, including spending the last year as education advisor to Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and advising the house education committee on the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind. Michael holds degrees from Yale College, the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the Yale Law School.