Donna Walker Tileston has served education as a leader in teaching, administration, research, writing, software development, and national consulting for the past thirty years. She has been responsible for curriculum development, management, technology, finance, grants management, public relations, and drug abuse prevention programs. For the past twenty-five years, she has been actively involved in brain research, including research on factors that inhibit learning or increase the brain�s ability to put information into long-term memory. Tileston�s ten-book collection What Every Teacher Should Know (Corwin Press 2003) received the 2004 Distinguished Achievement Award for Excellence in… Educational Publishing by the Association of Educational Publishers. Other Corwin press titles include What Every Parent Should Know About Schools, Standards, and High-Stakes Tests (2005), Ten Best Teaching Practices: How Brain Research, Learning Styles and Standards Define Teaching Competencies (2005), and Strategies for Teaching Differently (1998). Tileston has presented extensively at local, state, national, and international conferences, notably at The Hague in November 2005 and in Prague during March 2006.
Sandra K.nbsp;Darling is the founder and president of Learning Bridges. Grounded innbsp;five years of research, the Learning Bridges Aligned Instructional Database contains the most effective, research-based instructional strategies for the standards of all states--ranked in order of their power to impact learning. Born into extreme poverty in rural Minnesota, Darling understands the power of having significant adults in her life who believed in her, held high expectations, and taught her the value of integrity. She has co-authored three books in education and published articles in several education journals. She has presented on standards-based education, curriculum alignment, inclusion… practices, transformational leadership, school improvement, strategic planning, and assessment practices to thousands of educators. She is the leading expert on aligning instructional strategies to content standards and delivering that instruction with the modifications to close the gap in achievement for diverse learners, i.e., students from poverty, diverse cultures, and English language learners. She received her BS degree, three master's degrees, and her PhD from the University of Minnesota in related areas of education.