PD in the USVI

That's Jill Rosenblum, our Director of Standards and Assessment, conducting a professional development (PD) program this past week in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands.

As was noted below in the June 25th post, Walch Education is providing junior-high and high-school Academic Support Programs (ASPs) for both Language Arts and Mathematics to the St. Croix School District. Jill and Susan Graham, our Director of Education, helped to develop the four programs, and spent some time in the USVI (a territory of the United States), working with local educators to implement the programs, each of which was correlated to the Virgin Islands' Academic Content Standards.

In Jill's words, “Each of the ASPs contains approximately 60 hours of instruction. They’re complete programs with a variety of teaching tools and strategies, something the instructor can use to review core concepts, assess students’ needs, and—maybe most important—provide remediation and support for the skills identified as needing special attention.”

Walch Education has inked a deal with the St. Croix School District of the U.S. Virgin Islands. We'll be developing and providing customized versions of our award-winning Academic Support Programs (ASPs). The material is being developed for approximately 700 special education students in the St. Croix district. We're creating four distinct ASPS, one each for Junior High and High School Mathematics and English Language Arts.

Each ASP will be developed according to NCTM and NCTE standards and correlated to the Virgin Islands’ Academic Content Standards. The ASPs will also include implementation guides keyed to the basal series being used in various classrooms.

Walch Education’s ASP series has been widely used in both national, standards-based versions and state-specific versions in Maryland, Florida, and Georgia. The national Algebra and English Language Arts versions were recently given Distinguished Achievement Awards “For Excellence in Educational Publishing” at the annual meeting of the Association of Educational Publishers.