Grant Wood AEA staff showcase programs at open house event

CEDAR RAPIDS – Psychology students at BCLUW High School in Conrad are helping students in Eastern Iowa improve their social skills through video modeling.

Video modeling is a teaching method that uses video as a visual model of a targeted behavior or skill. Grant Wood Area Education Agency's Autism Support Service added video modeling to its services earlier this year, giving students on the autism spectrum another way to learn and practice social skills.

Kelly Trier, an autism consultant with Grant Wood AEA, said manufactured videos can cost as much as $100 each, but the student-created videos were made free of charge.

“The cool thing was a lot of students were so excited about this project that now they're interested in pursuing special services for a career,” Trier said.

It was stories like this that AEA staff shared with area educators Monday at the first-ever Grant Wood AEA Innovation Celebration. The open house showcased more than a dozen AEA programs, with staff members on hand to answer questions, give demonstrations or provide information.

Most of the programs have been utilized in Eastern Iowa schools for years, but have evolved or grown so much from when they were first introduced. The Grant Wood AEA Mentoring and Induction Program is a prime example.

The program partners with school districts to assist in the development of mentoring and induction systems for new teachers. In 2007, Grant Wood AEA partnered with the New Teacher Center in Santa Cruz, Calif., to offer evidence-based professional development that supports the beginning teacher's growth and development.

“We had 12 participants when we first started working with the New Teacher Center, now we have 445,” said Emily Thomson, co-lead of the agency's Mentoring and Induction Program.

Studies have found that a high percentage of new teachers leave the profession after five years, but teachers with an active and supportive mentoring program are more apt to stay. For this reason, Grant Wood AEA is exploring the possibility of a full-release mentoring model, in which master teachers would be released from their classroom duties for up to three years and mentor 15 new teachers.

“It's something we hope to bring to our districts,” Thomson said. “We have some districts that are interested.”

The project is on hold until funding can be secured.

New this school year is the Rotating Reads program, launched by the Grant Wood AEA Media Center in September.

The program supports reading and supplements school and classroom library resources by providing sets of books for individual classrooms on a rotating basis.

“We know through research that the more children are exposed to books, the better readers they'll be,” said Melva Starr, media specialist.

Teachers can keep the box of books, each box includes 13 fiction and 12 non-fiction titles, up to four weeks. Classrooms receive a new box with new books each time they return a box.

“We have enough sets that the children won't get the same books all year long,” added Hope Runge, a team leader.

Rotating Reads started with first and second grade classrooms. It will expand to include third grade in the 2011-12 school year.