Language and Literacy Development
Delegation Leaders: Dr. Douglas Fisher and Dr. Nancy Frey
PROFESSIONAL PURPOSE STATEMENT
A delegation of Language and Literacy Educators from the United States will visit the United Arab Emirates for the purpose of meeting with professional counterparts, academics, and government officials. The delegation will arrive on, visiting Abu Dhabi and Dubai, departing.
This delegation will be administered by the Citizen Ambassador Program. The leadership team of the Citizen Ambassador Program has administered high-level professional exchanges for over 35 years. Citizen Ambassadors is a program of Cultural Vistas, a US non-profit, non-governmental organization (NGO) based in Washington DC.
Our primary objective for this delegation is to meet with UAE Educators to discuss the development of comparative educational knowledge. US Classroom educators will learn about the effective practices that
transcend the borders of the US. In addition, we look to build strong ties for future collaboration in the areas of Language and Literacy Education.
The delegation will accomplish this objective through classroom observation, discussions with educators and curriculum specialists, briefings with government and NGO representatives.
The topics of discussion for this exchange are:
- collaborative learning structures
- early literacy development
- assessment practices
- education for female students
- school structures and governance
- dual language learning
Dr. Douglas Fisher and Dr. Nancy Frey, Delegation Leaders, have provided guidance in the development of the topics of discussion listed above.
Douglas Fisher, Ph.D., is Professor of Educational Leadership at San Diego State University and a teacher leader at Health Sciences High & Middle College. He is a member of the California Reading Hall of Fame and is the recipient of an International Reading Association Celebrate Literacy Award, the Farmer award for excellence in writing from the National Council of Teachers of English, as well as a Christa McAuliffe award for excellence in teacher education. He has published numerous articles on improving student achievement as well as books, such as Text-Complexity: Raising Rigor in Reading (with Nancy Frey and Diane Lapp), and Comprehension: The Skill, Will, and Thrill of Reading (with Nancy Frey and Nicole Law)). He is a past president of the International Reading Association and a past board member of the Literacy Research Association.
Nancy Frey, Ph.D., is a Professor of Educational Leadership at San Diego State University. She is a recipient of the Christa McAuliffe award for excellence in teacher education from the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. She has co-authored several books on literacy, including Rigorous Reading (with Doug Fisher) and This is Balanced Literacy (with Doug Fisher and Nancy Akhavan). She is a member of the Literacy Research Panel of the International Reading Association. She received the Early Career Achievement Award from the Literacy Research Association. Dr. Frey teaches a variety of courses in school improvement and literacy leadership. Her favorite place to be is Health Sciences High and Middle College, where she learns from teachers and students every day.