PATHWAYS TO SUCCESS
“Genius is in the idea. Impact, however, comes from action.” Simon Sinek
We are a Professional Learning division comprising a family of knowledgeable, forward-thinking, innovative leaders who are passionate about connecting individuals with opportunities and pathways to success.
We, the Professional Learning leaders, are a close-knit cadre of colleagues who believe that developing lasting relationships and meeting the needs of our education community are our most important priorities. Therefore, the offerings we present in this catalog are curated opportunities intended to inspire engagement and support in our collective growth and development. We look forward to assisting you on your journey in professional leadership and continued growth.
“PNW BOCES believes that empowering educators and leaders to participate in high quality professional learning opportunities is one of the greatest gifts that we can give ourselves and ultimately our students.”
DR. LYNN ALLEN, PNW BOCES ASSISTANT SUPERINTENDENT
Professional learning at PNW BOCES ensures pathways to success for every learner by:
• Targeting Regional Needs
• Aligning to Evidence-Based Practices
• Creating Intentional Connections
• Continuously Improving Through Ongoing Assessment
We believe that educational excellence is only achieved when it’s equitable for every student. We’re committed to leading and facilitating professional learning and networked collaboration that enhance schools’ systems and practices to ensure equitable opportunities, access, and outcomes for all students.
Our mission is to support educators and leaders to leverage technology and encourage all students to take an active role in their learning as they create, curate, connect, construct, collaborate, and communicate. We subscribe to a teaching first, technology second approach as we explore the possibilities technology affords us.
Family involvement is crucial to successful educational outcomes. We can help build, strengthen, and maintain school/family relationships by focusing on the best methods of communication.
As school safety continues to evolve, so does Regional Safety Services (RSS). Operating in the two distinct but connected areas of health & safety and security & safety, RSS is a nexus of those avenues. We are striving to remain at the forefront of school safety by providing high quality emergency planning, authentic training, and immediate crisis response. We remain committed to supporting our region.
We strive to provide high quality, innovative professional learning opportunities, support and resources to leaders at all levels by offering an array of services that are relevant, cutting edge and practical. We utilize national, state, and regional consultants, as well as successful local practitioners.
We believe that we improve outcomes for students with disabilities by ensuring the development of strong academic, social-emotional and selfdetermination skills. We provide a continuum of professional learning opportunities to support schools’ implementation of inclusive and evidencebased practices through a Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS).
We believe that social-emotional wellness and mental health are the foundations for success in school and in life. We’re dedicated to leading professional learning that promotes schools’ capacity to implement sustainable school mental health practices across a Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS).
Strengthening our practice is at the heart of success for all students. PNW BOCES has worked collaboratively with teachers and leaders across the region to design and provide learning opportunities that focus on teaching and learning priorities. Through emphasizing classroom practices, exploring standards, engaging in culture/community building strategies, and more, we can join with you to hone your craft and continue to grow.
Equitable Opportunities Equal Equitable Outcomes: We believe that educational excellence is only achieved when it’s equitable for every student. We’re committed to leading and facilitating professional learning and networked collaboration that enhance schools’ systems and practices to ensure equitable opportunities, access, and outcomes for all students.
Since 2013, the ACTION (Acting Conscientiously to Ignite Opportunity Now) Collaborative Network has united districts that are committed to achieving diversity, equity and inclusion through learning and working together to improve access, quality, efficiency, and impact of high-level professional learning. This type of learning enhances systems and practices to ensure equitable outcomes for ALL students.
Ann Narcisse COORDINATOR, GUIDANCE & CHILD STUDY CENTER & CO-FACILITATOR, ACTION COLLABORATIVE NETWORK ANarcisse@pnwboces.org
We provide evidence-based professional learning from scholars and practitioners who offer strategies to improve access, quality, diversity, equity, inclusion and efficiency of educational programs.
We facilitate leadership development for school leaders, educators and Boards of Education that promotes meaningful and impactful district, school and classroom change.
We center the student in our work. We value the empowerment that comes when resources for growth and success are available to youth. We strive for a society in which equity is codified in all educational frameworks.
We share promising systemic strategies that have proven to be successful in promoting diversity, equity and inclusion as well as addressing and closing the achievement and opportunity gaps locally, regionally and throughout the country.
Innovative technologies support learning settings that are more adaptable, flexible, and engaging.
As a result of the increased autonomy and options that technology offers students as a vital part of their learning experiences, educators have become technology coaches and facilitators.
The Education Technology Department assists schools in evaluating and selecting the appropriate software to facilitate learning environments that support all students.
From benchmark assessments to progress monitoring, education technology offers a wide range of analytics that inform instructional decisions. Understanding and using this data in day-to-day decision-making helps support teaching and learning.
Cooperative learning is at the core of today’s kindergarten through 12th-grade curriculum. We collaborate with you to guarantee that you have access to the appropriate technologies to facilitate a seamless connection with your students that includes conversation in real time between students and teachers.
The Education Technology Department provides various learning opportunities and resources through the lens of universal design for learning to assist educators and leaders as they use technology to meet the needs of all students.
It takes a village to raise a child, as well as the village’s continuing support to assist the youngster to succeed in school. Families and communities are encouraged to participate in their children’s education through family-schoolcommunity partnerships, with districts encouraging parental help with homework, providing leadership opportunities, developing relationships with local groups, and more. Students enhance their academic performance and gain supporters who promote their success when family and community members are active in their learning.
Andrew J. Ecker, Ed.D. DIRECTOR & SYSTEMS CHANGE FACILITATOR LOWER HUDSON REGIONAL PARTNERSHIP CENTER AEcker@pnwboces.org
Parent and community engagement is a fundamental and necessary piece of a successful educational experience. The involvement of parents is considered a “best practice” in educational research, and schools should encourage all families to be involved in their child’s education. PNW BOCES offers many learning opportunities to help schools understand the impact of family engagement.
Effective communication builds trust, improves relationships, and promotes team building. Effective family and community engagement helps all stakeholders move students closer to their goals. Schools and districts must ensure that their environment is welcoming to all students, parents, and community members, and that everyone has an equal voice in the education of their children. Come learn with us on how to improve communication with varying stakeholders.
Parents and families can be powerful influences on their children’s educational success. As experts on their child’s strengths and needs, parents are the best advocates. Family and community engagement provides for structure and consistency between home and school. Behavior and academic skills practiced at home help to improve achievement at school. Come learn how to engage families in this process to improve programming and instruction for students.
Effective family and community engagement is responsive to the needs of the families and community members. This communication should be culturally responsive and in languages and modes that can be understood by all. Come learn with us on how to plan, develop, and implement protocols and procedures to ensure family and community engagement is culturally responsive, meeting the needs of all.
For nearly 6 hours each day and up to 13 essential years of their social, psychological, physical, and intellectual development, schools have direct contact with more than 95 percent of our country’s young people aged 5 to 17. Schools play an essential role in supporting children’s and teenagers’ health and safety by assisting them in developing lifetime health habits.
With the ever-changing landscape of school safety, empowering our educators to respond in times of crisis and to support students in situations they have never trained or signed up for can be a monumental task. Here at Regional Safety Services we want to help strengthen staff members’ ability to respond through training and drilling in order to keep their schools safe.
FGuglieri@pnwboces.org
In all aspects of building safety and security, a good foundation for response is having a good plan. Whether it’s reunification, protective actions, arrival and dismissal or district specific challenges, we can help.
Plans on paper must translate to action and response. These should be practiced and drilled in order to evaluate their effectiveness. The best evaluation comes from an objective perspective, which we can provide.
Despite your best planning and mitigating efforts, crises and emergencies will arise. In the event that they do, staff can rely on their training. Let us work with your team to build confidence in their ability to respond to whatever crisis they encounter.
New York State requires employers to have written policies, plans, and mandated trainings for the health and wellness of their staff and students. Our services can help you evaluate and meet the needs, so that a district not only achieves the standards, but exceeds them.
Leaders have the power to shape the landscape of our schools and our students’ experiences, and the Center for Educational Leadership offers opportunities to shape great leaders.
At the Center for Educational Leadership we support and grow building and district leaders who believe that students always come first. Through innovative, highquality, and economical learning opportunities, we strive to equip leaders with the knowledge, perspective, skills, and experiences needed to meet the challenges of education today and ensure that students continue to be the priority.
COORDINATORLeadership can be a lonely job, but at the Center for Educational Leadership we offer a safe and supportive environment for leaders to gather with regional peers to build a collegial network and collaborate on topics impacting school leadership.
Leaders in the fields of human resources and business can often feel isolated from the rest of the district’s educational leaders. Making collegial connections with fellow leaders not only provides valuable learning opportunities, but also the ability to create professional connections throughout the region.
Great educational leaders are built from great educators. The Center for Educational Leadership offers opportunities for educators to attain not only credentials to lead, but also the skills and network to ensure success within leadership roles. CEL’s college and university partnerships with Bank Street College, Clarkson University, Cornell University, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Manhattanville College, Pace University, and Fordham University provide a wealth of support for leaders looking to enhance their knowledge and skill set.
We believe that we improve outcomes of students with disabilities by ensuring the development of strong academic, social-emotional and self-determination skills. We provide a continuum of professional learning opportunities to support schools’ implementation of inclusive and evidencebased practices through a Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS).
We believe that students with disabilities are successful when schools and districts provide them full access to the educational experience by identifying, implementing and assessing the impact of evidence-based instructional practices and multi-tiered systems of support; working with families, students and colleagues to create effective individualized educational programs for each student; and ensuring students with disabilities set achievable and meaningful goals for engagement in the community during and after leaving school. We provide professional learning, coaching, consultation, and leadership support to enhance schools’ capacity to implement and sustain this specialized work.
Key Benefits of PNW BOCES DEI Learning Opportunities
Key Benefits of Pupil Personnel & Special Education Learning Opportunities
Serving students with disabilities requires a team approach. We facilitate networks of support for clinicians and educators of diverse backgrounds to foster innovative approaches that help students develop agency.
We take pride in disseminating and supporting implementation of evidence-based practices for students with disabilities.
We lead and facilitate professional learning to support schools’ implementation of multi-tiered systems of support, wherein every student has access to, and benefits from, what they need, when and where they need it.
We promote connections among schools and community partners to ensure students are provided practical instruction to develop lifelong learning skills such as self-advocacy, social-emotional skills, higher order thinking, employability skills and consumer and life skills.
We believe that socialemotional wellness and mental health are foundational for success in school and life. We’re dedicated to leading professional learning that promotes schools’ capacity to implement evidencebased school mental health practices across a Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS).
We unite school, community, state, and national practitioners, experts, and policymakers to enhance connections and promote learning and improvement.
We partner with local and national experts to promote fidelity and sustainability of implementation.
We support the dissemination of evidencebased practices through training, coaching, and consultation to improve student outcomes pertaining to the most complex student challenges.
We celebrate, share and learn from successes so that we can all see what’s working, and how to do more of it.
Incorporating the science behind adult learning, our staff and consultants look forward to helping you, your colleagues, and the region continue to build stronger outcomes for students, educators, and communities.
Chances are, our first experience with the education profession started with each of us in the role of a student. Most of us tend to remember teachers who helped us become better people, and classrooms and schools that awakened our interest in our current hobbies and professions. That love for a content area, a discipline, a skillset, may have been awakened anywhere, but for most of us, it was honed in a school. Teaching and learning are at the center of what schools, districts, and communities are designed to create. Our opportunities in this area are structured to help teachers, leaders, and all other educators connect their own practice with evolving ideas and strategies focused on curriculum, instruction, and assessment.
Fred Ende DIRECTOR, CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTIONAL SERVICES FEnde@pnwboces.orgWith so many curricular resources available to educators, it can be challenging to determine function and fit. Our professional learning opportunities allow educators to explore potential partnerships with a variety of different organizations in the education space, and targeted partnerships allow teachers and leaders to dive deeply into programs and tools that can be incorporated in as small a space as a single classroom or as large a community as an entire district.
Adult learners and young learners have many things in common. One of those characteristics is the desire to strive for answers, and in pursuing answers, unlock new, and more intricate questions. As educators, our practice, our repertoire, our tool kit is intricately tied to our professional identities. By continuing to learn while simultaneously building and growing our skill sets, we become even more effective and dynamic educators and grow closer to meeting the needs of all students. Of course, adult learners are different from young learners. Utilizing our understanding of adult learners, and what works for professional learning, we have designed our workshops and institutes to focus on building instructional practices that both answer questions and identify new ones, all with a purpose toward fostering continuous improvement.
We can always understand the world a little bit better when we look beyond our day-to-day environments. Akin to walking a path looking down versus looking straight ahead, the more expansive our vision, the more perspective we gain. Teaching and learning are never meant to be a solitary practice. With that in mind, our professional learning opportunities focus on helping educators build strong long-term connections through multi-session learning opportunities and a significant network of collegial circle groups where educators can gather in role-alike and/or interest-alike settings to share experiences and learn how work exists outside our individual schools and districts.
The field of education is enormous. There are so many areas to provide focus and no shortage of opportunities to grow to support student learning. To emphasize impact, our learning sessions are structured to be as relevant as possible, working closely with educators in regional districts to design and craft learning, and seeking out educators who are closest to the work to lead these opportunities. And, since there is never enough time to explore all that we want to, learning is centered around key priorities identified by teachers and curriculum leaders from across the Lower Hudson Valley. In this way, significant value and connection for learning are present from the start.
REGARDLESS OF OUR ROLES, EVERY INTERACTION WE HAVE IS BOTH AN OPPORTUNITY TO TEACH, AND AN OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN!
Our college and university partnerships exemplify the PNW BOCES mission of service and innovation through partnership by coordinating our efforts to offer opportunities for leaders to build their skills and credentials.
Many educators self-identify as lifelong learners who understand the importance of consistent growth, development, and engaging in new learning. Our unique partnerships with colleges and universities support educators in learning and growing both personally and professionally, which ultimately supports the needs of every student. Our programs and courses offer the opportunity for educators to learn and grow with progressive educators with diverse passions who desire to innovate and achieve positive outcomes for every student.
Tasha Wright COORDINATOR OF SCHOOL LEADERSHIP TWright@pnwboces.org
We provide opportunities for educators looking to advance their careers or strengthen their skills that will support them in their current role through our longstanding partnerships with colleges and universities, which provide pathways for advancement and certification. Our partnerships include Bank Street College of Education, Clarkson University, Cornell University School of Industrial & Labor Relations, Fordham University Graduate School of Education, Harvard University School of Education, Manhattanville College, Pace University, and the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence.
Collaborate with local and state-wide leaders in education to network, innovate, enhance decision-making skills, engage in complex problem-solving, and coordinate efforts to build capacity for the success of every student. Classes are led by highly skilled and experienced leaders in education providing access to an incredible depth and breadth of knowledge.
Program requirements, including internships, fieldwork opportunities, advisement, applied research, and case study analysis, connect theory to practice and provide valuable learning opportunities for educators.
Flexible coursework and cutting-edge opportunities in our programs prepare teachers and leaders for the evolving future of education.
Dr. Lynn Allen, Assistant Superintendent of Putnam | Northern Westchester BOCES, oversees the Professional Learning, Communications and Creative Services divisions and serves as co-facilitator of the Regional Crisis Teams. She is the President of the NYS Association of School Personnel Administrators and member of the Board of Directors/Treasurer for NYSCOSS’ Leadership for Educational Achievement Foundation and the NYS Association for Women in Administration.
Dr. Andrew J. Ecker is Director of the Lower Hudson Regional Partnership Center. He serves as co-vice president of the New York Council of Administrators of Special Education, and has previously served as facilitator of the PNW BOCES ACTION Collaborative Network, facilitator of the PNW BOCES Suicide Prevention in Schools Regional Leadership Team, and Hudson Valley region leader for the Suicide Prevention Center of New York.
Fred Ende is the Director of Curriculum & Instructional Services for Putnam | Northern Westchester BOCES. Early in his career, Ende worked as a middle school science teacher and department chair. He is an avid blogger, and has written two books, one focusing on designing professional learning and the other connected to relationships and relationship building.
Frank Guglieri is the Regional Safety Services Coordinator for Putnam | Northern Westchester BOCES. He serves as a consultant, trainer, advisor, and inspector for 18 component school districts in the areas of security, safety, risk, and health in addition to 10 other non-component districts. Guglieri has extensive experience developing safety procedures and policies and conducting tabletop and practical emergency drills. He is a trainer for schools throughout the region on the development and implementation of threat assessment teams.
Dr. Jennifer HarritonWilson is the Coordinator of Education Technology for Putnam | Northern Westchester BOCES. Harriton-Wilson has worked as an elementary teacher, elementary principal, director of technology, CIO, and director of pupil personnel services. She is an assistive technology advocate, data enthusiast, and believes every experience is a learning opportunity.
Ann Narcisse serves as the Coordinator for the Guidance and Child Study Center for Putnam | Northern Westchester BOCES. As such, she is charged with supervising professional development in the areas of social emotional wellness; culturally responsible practices; and diversity, equity and inclusion. She also leads the evaluation and interpretation services that help districts from Westchester to Sullivan County New York complete over 2,000 evaluations annually.
Tasha Wright is the Coordinator of School Leadership at Putnam | Northern Westchester BOCES. Prior to her role at the Center for Educational Leadership, Wright worked as a Regional Special Education Training Specialist for the Lower Hudson Regional Partnership Center, where she provided support to educators in special education laws and regulations and evidence-based instructional strategies.
Experience a multidimensional learning environment.
Connect with experts in your field of study.
All local BOCES provide professional development and support services and you should check with your local BOCES to see what is offered. These offerings are not intended to take the place of similar offerings provided by your own BOCES.
