Liz Locatelli

Consultant

Liz has been passionate about helping at-risk students throughout her career.   As a public-school teacher, she created a summer program to help students who had been socially promoted after failing three or more subjects to prepare for the rigors of high school.  By the end of the summer, she realized that by building relationships and developing a growth mindset, students were making progress, but not enough to succeed. Therefore, she created an alternative program for ninth grade, which focused on scaffolding tasks and providing ongoing feedback through a series of formative assessments.  By the end of the year, most of the twenty students were passing or at least feeling capable of passing in the future. This alternative program, which focuses on building student efficacy still exists today for over one hundred students in the North Rockland CSD. Her work with at-risk students in the alternative program as well as teaching writing to 11-18 year-olds in a maximum prison taught her a great deal about relating to students who carry the baggage of failure and need academic experiences that prove to them that they are capable members of their school community.

Liz has an extensive background in literacy education, curriculum development, professional development, and action research.  She holds an Ed.D., from New York University in Literacy Education and her dissertation was on engaging teachers in creating their own curriculum.  She has taught high school English and Global Studies as well as graduate courses in literacy education and the thesis course for CCNY and NYIT. She used this background to create a six-part program for NYC Regional Bilingual Education Resource Network (RBERN) at Fordham entitled “Building Efficacy in ELLs.” which was repeated a second year and brought into the Mineola District for the whole ELA and ENL staff. 

An interest in building efficacy in ELLs led Liz to research in Culturally Responsive Instruction, which has been the topic of presentations in various school districts in New York and Massachusetts.

Liz has also worked extensively with administrators and instructional leaders from NYC public schools in the areas of principal evaluation and self-reflection. Some of the questions that Liz is passionate about are: “What tools, dispositions and support do administrators and instructional leaders need in order to ensure equitable instruction for all students?” and “How does the kind of feedback teachers receive affect their willingness to embrace change?”

Liz has had developed multiple resources for LCI and two articles published by ASCD, “Tough Love and Endless Chances” in Smartbrief and “Students Will If Teachers Will:  Re-orienting Teachers and Students Toward Self-Directed Learning” in IMPACT. She also wrote a chapter on Vocabulary Development for Why Am I Doing This? by Giselle Martin-Kniep. She has also authored a number of resources and tools. She can be reached at lizl@lciltd.org.

Profile

Tough Love and Endless Chances

Liz Locatelli

ASCD Smartbrief. 2002.

Students Will If Teachers Will

Liz Locatelli

Re-orienting Teachers and Students Toward Self-Directed Learning. IMPACT. 1997.

Close reading elements

Liz Locatelli

At its heart, close reading is about critically reading a text for deep understanding.  This tool can be used by teachers to design a close reading experience that allows students to successfully read complex text.

Three Interrelated Keys to Empowering Students to Comprehend Complex Text

Liz Locatelli

This tool is designed to help teachers explore strategies and questions that empower students to read more independently and to understand texts more deeply.  

Collaboration rubric

Liz Locatelli

This rubric is designed to assist teachers in establishing clear expectations for student collaboration.