Investment in high quality professional development is the best investment a school system can make because the single most important factor in any child's education is what his teachers know and can do.  Louise E. Miller's staff development programs show teachers how to integrate literacy skills in meaningful ways and how to develop students' critical thinking skills.  Programs focus on inquiry, on constructing knowledge, and on reading and writing grounded in evidence from the text.  They are applicable to teachers in all subject areas.  Two powerful programs are:  "Think! Like Socrates" and "Think! Like a Writer."  See Louise's website www.ThinkLouiseMiller.com for further information. You can also read her new journal article, "Socratic Seminar Discussions: A Vehicle for Teaching Thinking and Comprehension" in the Summer 2017 issue of the North Carolina Middle Level Education Journal. (https://www.ncmlejournal.org/author/miller)

Developing writing skills is an important path to improved literacy because good writers are good readers, but good readers are not always good writers.  So, it is effective to teach kids how to be exact writers by integrating close reading as well as speaking and listening skills.  Louise's program Think! Like a Writer emphasizes the writing process, collaboration, and argumentation at the middle school level.

Louise is passionate about the regular use of Socratic Seminar discussions across the curriculum, so she is writing Socratic Seminar Guides filled with open-ended seminar questions keyed to the text of important novels and memoirs.  You can also download her free "Top Ten Reasons to Conduct Socratic Seminars" and her free "How to Conduct Socratic Seminars" to get you started.   Then contact Louise about providing staff development for teachers.  Her program Think! Like Socrates teaches how to conduct Socratic Seminar discussions.  The unique format of her program combines training, observing, modeling and coaching.

Louise E. Miller has 33 years of experience working in North Carolina Public Schools as a classroom teacher, gifted program specialist, assistant principal, curriculum specialist, and literacy coach.  She has earned M.A. and Ed.S. degrees from Appalachian State University and is a Nationally Board Certified Teacher in English Language Arts for Early Adolescence.  She believes in the constructivist approach and wants to help teachers and students construct their own knowledge through active participation in the learning experience.