Foundational Literacy Skills: The Power of Ongoing Monitoring

About the Presenters

Dr. Gabrielle Rodriguez has served over two decades as an educational leader as a teacher, central office administrator, executive director, and is in her eighth year as a superintendent. Besides graduating from the Illinois School for Advanced Leadership and participating in the first Global Service Learning Project through Illinois Association of School Administrators, she has been a participant in several women in leadership initiatives at the state and national levels earning her the Phenomenal Woman of Metropolitan St. Louis and completed the Women’s Leadership courses through Harvard University. All of these experiences led to the creation of the Girls Emerging as Women Leaders program to empower young girls to change the world. Her priority has been elevating her three daughters, two granddaughters, and two nieces to be competitive women in leadership, and her son to embrace women empowerment. She is the author of Becoming ME and owner of Becoming ME Enterprises, LLC.

Donna J. Whyte is a certified teacher, education consultant, and author with extensive experience in Pre-K–12 classrooms, specializing in supporting struggling readers and writers. She has presented keynotes and workshops at state, national, and international levels, sharing practical, high-energy strategies that inspire educators. Donna’s work includes developing administrative summits on student-centered classrooms and creating the Reading Aptitude Continuum to address the needs of struggling readers. She is the author of several books, including You Can’t Teach a Class You Can’t Manage and The More Ways You Teach, the More Children You Reach, along with 12 activity CDs designed to help teachers engage students in higher-level learning.

Dr. Evelyn Johnson is the Vice President of Research at Riverside Insights, leading a team of researchers and psychometricians to ensure Riverside’s assessments meet high standards for reliability and validity. Before joining Riverside, she spent 15 years as a Professor of Early and Special Education at Boise State University, where she also served as the Principal Investigator of Project RESET, a special education teacher observation system. She is the author/co-author of more than 70 peer-reviewed articles and three textbooks, including RTI: A Practitioner’s Guide to Implementing Response to Intervention.

Prior to becoming the Senior Assessment Strategist at Riverside Insights, Dr. Lisa Micou championed students’ social-emotional needs as the intervention and training specialist for social-emotional learning in a large division in Virginia, as a National Certified School Psychologist at both the elementary and high school levels in suburban Chicago and Virginia, and as an SEL4VA Leadership Team Member. She received her master’s and doctorate in psychology at Northern Illinois University and earned her post-master’s certificate in educational leadership and policy studies from the University of Richmond where she now serves as an adjunct professor.