We've Moved

As of August 1st, we are residents of Washington State. We relocated our business from Lake Tahoe, CA to Renton Washington, just outside of Seattle, and are looking forward to the many opportunities this location will afford. And no, the weather has not been rainy - so far.

We have worked with Advanc-Ed to align the language used to describe GATEWAY TO MASTERY^® with the language used in their accreditation models. Call us to find out how how we support all phases of Breakthrough School Improvement and District Accreditation. We can facilitate training for any school or district trying to take either one of these accreditation models all the way into the classroom.

We are the featured speakers at the Indiana NCA Spring Conference taking place on March 3rd and 4th, 2008, in Indianapolis, IN. We will conduct a 2 day intensive overview of GATEWAY TO MASTERY^® to aid administrators, and teachers in improving learning and enthusiasm.  For a full description of the session, and information on how to sign up for the conference, click here.

California

A pilot group of teachers, in Poway CA, was trained in some basic GATEWAY TO MASTERY^®  methodologies. One of the requirements for the class was to implement GTM processes in their classrooms for a semester. All teachers had positive results, most elected to continue the processes on their own for the second semester and two of them shared the following stories:

Students were told they would try out new ideas for the first semester only. As the semester drew to a close, the GTM process were so effective that students put together a petition to ensure the teacher continued into the second semester. Surprised that they appreciated it so much, she gladly continued.

In a high school AP Chemistry class, students found Learning Checks™ so valuable, they requested "checks" be done twice a week instead of just once. Surprised that students were interested in a learning process and were requesting to be assessed more often, the teacher enthusiastically agreed.

Both of these stories illustrate what we emphasize in every one of our workshops. If you want to engage students in their learning, don't just find fun activities - engage them in the improvement of their learning and environment. The unlocked enthusiasm will surprise you!

Texas

Teachers in the Leander Independent School District have come up with a wonderful adaptation to the feedback process they learned our Culture Mastery™ workshop. They posted a large Plus/Delta on the wall of the     staff room for teachers to write on any time between staff meetings. Feedback from the Plus/Delta is typed up before the meeting and then shared and discussed. This modification saves time and continually obtains needed feedback to improve staff enthusiasm.

Minnesota

Ross Bergerson sent us these graphs from Learning Checks™ conducted in his classes in Rochester, MN. These graphs show a tremendous amount of learning progress, however a closer look at the data reveals one point that is outside the trend.

There is an unusually high score in both classes around week 12 or 13. When he asked his students about this spike in scores, they told him a substitute had misunderstood how to do a Learning Check™ and checked them on the first ten items on the Knowledge Map™, rather than a random selection of ten items from the entire  Knowledge Map™. In a normal teach-test-forget classroom, a mistake like this would likely have caused disproportionately low scores because the content had not been talked about since the beginning of the year. With Knowledge Mastery™ the students were not allowed to forget what they learned, so as the year progressed, they remembered the information more - not less!

Keep up the great work everyone!

If you are currently practicing any discipline of GATEWAY TO MASTERY^®, please send your success stories, so we may share them in upcoming editions. Click here to send us your story

Locations for GTM Fall workshops/conferences

1.Texas

2.Ohio

3.Missouri

5.Florida

To add your organization to our schedule, call us at 1-866-630-6995.

Thank you for your interest,

Jacquie and Jeff Burgard

Improvement Facilitators

J.J. Burgard & Associates

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