Children’s Workshop Director Invited to Direct Instruction Conference

The Association for Direct Instruction invited Hillary Whiteside, Director of Children’s Workshop, along with Mary Taylor, Director of The Institute for Effective Education’s (TIEE’s) Urban Skills Center to attend a conference in Eugene, Oregon on the use of Direct Instruction (DI) practices and materials with students with autism.

The TIEE Directors met with two eminent research professors of DI practices and outcomes, Tim Slocum, Ph.D., of Utah State University and Cathy Watkins, Ph.D., of California State University Stanislaus, to develop a workshop that would inform behavior analysts and other professionals the ways in which DI programs in the areas of language and reading are uniquely designed to address the needs of learners with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).

TIEE’s directors provided data on students with ASD who have successfully progressed in the DI programs as they have been modified to accommodate the special needs of the students in TIEE schools. A joint presentation is planned for the next California Association of Behavior Analysis (CalABA) Conference in February, 2010.

COOK Education Center Enrolls Its First Foreign Student

The Institute for Effective Education (TIEE) has recently obtained I-17 status enabling it to enroll foreign students in its COOK Education Center. After a comprehensive review by the U.S. Departments of Justice and Immigration and Naturalization, TIEE was given the ability to grant foreign student status (I-20) to eligible students. The status has recently been granted to a Pakistani adolescent, who has been enrolled in COOK Education Center’s Secondary Program following an extensive assessment of the school’s ability to educate the student in keeping with his family’s wishes.

Dr. Suzanne Fitch, Ed.D., TIEE’s Executive Director of Programs and Personnel, and administrator responsible for issuing the status of eligibility, commented that “many of the world’s countries do not have the level of expertise in educational programming that is central to TIEE’s schools, so we take this opportunity to assist foreign families who wish to have their children educated in our schools. We open our doors to interested families in the belief that our schools provide the highest quality education appropriate to the needs of their children and their enrollment will add immeasurably to the multiculturalism already a valued aspect of our schools.”

Steve Wheless, is TIEE’s Professional of the Year 2008

Recommended highly by Carol Nielsen, Head Coordinator of COOK Education Center, Steve Wheless was named The Institute for Effective Education’s (TIEE’s) Professional of the Year for the 2008-2009 academic year.

Mr. Wheless was cited as a model staff member, a highly skilled teacher who has been successful working with students who have never before been successful in school, an outstanding coach and trainer of fellow staff members who is often requested as a supervisor due to his high level of skill and his genuine concern for the growth of his fellow staff members, and a natural leader with a consistent positive attitude and good humor. He gets results and the kids love him.

Steven Wheless is Awarded CEC-DLD’s Outstanding Educator of the Year

Steven Wheless, special educator in the Foundations Program of The Institute for Effective Education’s (TIEE’s) COOK Education Center, a “model TIEE staff member since 2002,” and TIEE’s 2008 Professional of the Year, was awarded the Outstanding Educator of the Year by the Council for Exceptional Children’s Division for Learning Disabilities (CEC-DLD) at that association’s annual conference held at the Catamaran Hotel in San Diego in October.

The award, which is presented annually at the CEC-DLD Conference, recognizes outstanding professionals who serve students with specific learning disabilities. Nominees from all over the United States may be special educators, general educators, administrators, or other educators who have spent at least five years serving students with learning disabilities at any grade level.

Mr. Wheless, who also was TIEE’s Professional of the Year for the 2008-2009 academic year, was cited as “an outstanding coach and trainer of fellow teachers and staff members, a hands-on problem solver, the embodiment of an outstanding educator who consistently models positive teaching methods, is always motivated and enthusiastic to the point of it being contagious, and has an awesome sense of humor. Students are drawn to his hilarious personality, and we all look to him for support and guidance because he knows the curriculum and he knows how to teach.”