What I Offer

While Bill is exceptionally proud of the fact that he is still a full-time classroom teacher, he is also determined to make a difference on education by working beyond his classroom as well.  To that end, he has started to offer consulting services for schools and districts locally, nationally and internationally.

He is comfortable offering support in a wide variety of areas ranging from supporting the development of collaborative teacher teams and teaching with technology to integrating more responsible feedback, grading and assessment practices into the work of classroom teachers. 

Some of the most popular services that Bill provides include:

One, Two and Three-Day Professional Learning Community Workshops:  Bill has worked as a member of a collaborative team in a Professional Learning Community at Work for over fifteen years.  He is also the only full-time classroom teacher to be hired as a PLC Associate by Solution Tree — the nation’s largest provider of professional development for professional learning communities.  

His first-hand experience with collaboration at the team level and his expertise as a presenter and author with Solution Tree makes him uniquely qualified to help teacher audiences understand the core work of collaborative teams in professional learning communities.

Team-Level PLC Coaching:  No single strategy that we use in schools has a greater impact on student achievement than providing teams of teachers with the knowledge and the skills necessary to study their practice with one another.  When teams believe that they have what it takes to help ALL learners succeed, they move forward confidently together regardless of the challenges that they may face.  

Building confident collaborative teams across an entire school, however, requires differentiation.  Consider letting Bill come into your building to assess the work being done by teams across different grade levels and subject areas.  Then, ask Bill to identify individual steps that each collaborative team can take to move their work forward.  Doing so will ensure that collective teacher efficacy becomes a powerful reality in your building.  

One and Two-Day Building Confident Learners Workshops: Researchers like John Hattie and Bob Marzano have shown time and again that one of the most important steps that teachers can take to accelerate student learning is to leave every student convinced that they are capable, confident learners.  When students believe in their own ability to learn, they are more likely to fully invest in their learning.  

Bill can customize a one or two-day workshop that will introduce your teachers to the importance of student self-efficacy and to the kinds of simple steps that teams can take to integrate student self-efficacy strategies into their daily instruction.

One and Two-Day Response to Intervention Workshops:  John Hattie and Bob Marzano have both proven through their research that Response to Intervention is one of the highest leverage practices that we use in schools as well.  But as RTI at Work expert Mike Mattos argues, interventions are only effective if we are “doing the right work right.”  

Let Bill come in and deliver that message to your faculty.  He is especially effective at helping teachers and collaborative teams to better understand the essential actions that they need to take at both Tier 1 and Tier 2 to lay the foundation for a school’s efforts to ensure that all students learn at the highest levels.

Classroom Modeling:  Sometimes teachers need to see key instructional practices in action with students before they are willing to try something new.  To that end, consider asking Bill to spend a day working with your teachers to develop a lesson and then have him teach your students.  Doing so will give teams the opportunity to critique a practice together and to learn more about the role that peer observations can play in collaborative work.

To learn more about the kind of content that Bill brings to his workshops, consider exploring the resources that he created for a recent three-day introduction to professional learning communities, for a two-day webinar on student self-assessment, or for a one-day webinar on the role that teachers and collaborative teams play in the Response to Intervention process.  

You might also be interested in the resources that Bill developed for a breakout session on tips and tricks for remote teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic or the materials that he developed for a webinar on using digital tools to structure differentiated classrooms.

What makes Bill unique as a presenter and a professional development provider is that he is still a full-time classroom teacher.  That gives his voice a measure of credibility with teacher audiences that presenters who have left the classroom struggle to gain.  The solutions that Bill suggests for overcoming challenges are solutions that he’s actually tested — and when he talks about changing learning spaces for today’s kids, he’s literally talking about the students in his classroom.

#thatmatters

Bill also works in a school with a year-round calendar.  He has three-week windows in October, January, April and July open to consult with schools and districts.  That makes him a perfect option for schools and/or districts looking to establish a ongoing relationship with a critical friend.

#thatmatterstoo

If you’re interested in learning more about working with Bill, feel free to email him directly at wferriter@outlook.com.  You an also find him on Twitter or on LinkedIn.