Knowledgeable.
Professional.
Dr. Charles Dana Hall
Co-Founder and Chief Academic Officer
Dr. Hall provides the experience and expertise to meaningfully impact literacy-based PD and student achievement. In addition to working for years as a classroom teacher, instructional coach and district coordinator, he was also Colorado’s state literacy specialist. During that time, Dr. Hall directed and facilitated the work of over 100 educators as they collaborated to translate the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) into a sample curriculum. These samples serve as resources for districts’ voluntary-use, providing options for differentiating and sequencing the concepts, skills, and content of the CCSS across a course or year.
In addition to his work on the CCSS, Dr. Hall helped lead the development of Colorado’s Strategic Literacy Plan in 2012. This plan serves as a guiding document for all the Colorado Department of Education’s efforts to support the state’s districts, schools and communities. These invaluable learning and leadership experiences provided a deep understanding of the standards and help underpin the curriculum development and policy implementation work of SLC; including continued work in helping educators develop curricula to meet their students’ needs. This keen understanding allows SLC to not only provide quality PD but help schools and districts get impressive results.
Dr. Krista Morrison
Director of Literacy and Learning
Dr. Morrison holds a doctorate in education from the University of Colorado in Leadership in Educational Equity with an emphasis on instructional leadership. She has worked in education and school reform at both school and district levels since 1999. Dr. Morrison has worked as an English teacher, school and district-based literacy coach, and literacy consultant. Her expertise includes English language arts curriculum, assessment systems, and standards alignment, Response to Intervention, disciplinary literacy, and literacy instruction in STEM environments. She has experience training teachers and instructional leaders on the CCSS across the United States and supporting instructional and curricular alignment of these standards. Dr. Morrison has extensive experience collaborating with district leaders to develop strategic and responsive professional development plans that include implementation benchmarks, job-embedded supports, and plans to maintain and sustain new learning beyond the life of any project for both administrators and teachers.
Her high school literacy coaching program was showcased at a Colorado literacy coaching panel in Douglas County, Colorado in 2007. Krista is a Denver Writing Project fellow, an affiliate of the National Writing Project. She has co-authored an ACT preparation book titled, ACT 36: Aiming for the Perfect Score. Her work on discussion-based classrooms has been published in the Colorado Reading Council Journal (2006, 2007). As an instructor for the University of Colorado Denver, Krista taught the Colorado Reading Project for two summers working with teachers across various disciplines to support reading in the content areas. Her interest and work in disciplinary literacy led to her dissertation research project on Disciplinary Literacy Apprenticeship in secondary science in a STEM context.
Sara Mathews
Lead Consultant and Implementation Specialist
Ms. Mathews brings 25 years of experience working in Aurora Public Schools, CO, as well as the expertise earned by becoming a certified LETRS (Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling) trainer. Through this research-based training and her years of experience as an instructional coach, Ms. Mathews not only learned the current cognitive science surrounding reading acquisition, but worked to help teachers translate that research base into classroom instruction. Ms. Mathews began her career as an elementary teacher in both general education and special education. Years later she earned the title, Literacy Teacher Leader, received her Administration license in 2008, and moved into a district level administration position for Exceptional Student Services. During these years as a “Consultant for Exceptional Student Services” Ms. Mathews supervised the special education programs in eight schools. She helped lead and support school level teams with all aspects of instruction, compliance and parent communication for special education students.
Ms. Mathews has extensive experience helping teachers systematically provide instruction based on Scientifically-Based Reading Research (SBRR), including job-embedded coaching and modeling of explicit, targeted instruction in phonics and phonological awareness designed to help students acquire the foundational skills of reading. In addition, Ms. Mathews’ expertise with a wide range of classroom approaches enables her to capitalize on individual teachers’ strengths, not only increasing their knowledge and skills but building their confidence and empowering them to do a job that sometimes seems daunting.