NQEC 2006 – Dallas, TX

We will be speaking at the National Quality in Education Conference in Dallas, Texas in November of 2006. Hope to see you there!

New Fax Number

We have a new fax number here at J.J. Burgard & Associates. This will allow us to correspond more efficiently by fax while we are away from the office. The new number is (206) 495-0768. Please make a note of it.

Copyrights and Trademarks

We are working to copyright and trademark our materials and here is our progress

1. GATEWAY TO MASTERY^® is now a registered trademark.

2. The Essential Knowledge Resource (EKR) is in the copyright process

3. Dichotomous Rubric is now trademarked

Rogers High School - Rogers, Arkansas

Teachers and administrators in the Rogers High School have done a great job implementing aspects of GATEWAY TO MASTERY^® school wide We are working with the entire staff and here are a few of their stories.

Language Arts

One of the schools improvement goals is in literacy. They began by giving literacy assessments in all classes at regular intervals for the 2005-2006 school year. Now, after training in Performance Mastery, they are agreeing upon a common rubric, defining aspects of a high quality responses and understanding how to involve students in graphing progress, identifying weaknesses and planning improvement. We will share the results of this project next year.

World Geography

In a World Geography class composed of mostly low achievers and/or students who have a difficult time with the English language, the teacher decided to use the Knowledge Mastery™ process to help his kids pass the mandatory district assessment.  His students “blew the roof off” the test. Now, some in the department think the teacher must have cheated while others are calling for a tougher test, even though their students did the same as they always have. It has begun a discussion about the usefulness of a test that is simply recall. What a great discussion that will be!

Social Studies

A teaching veteran who adopted the Knowledge Mastery process found that when he knew exactly what the students were supposed to know and how they were progressing, his time was freed up to do much deeper and fun activities. He enjoyed the year more than any other year he had been teaching. Some are afraid GATEWAY TO MASTERY processes will take too much additional class time, but as this teacher found out, it actually saves time in the long run and allows more time for more meaningful activities.

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

Places we will be working this Spring and early Summer:

1. Leander, Texas

2. Rochester, Minnesota

3. Chicago, Illinois

4. Incline Village, Nevada

5. Bloomington, Indiana

6. Jonesboro, Arkansas

7. Mayfield, Ohio

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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