A Handbook for Unstoppable Learning (Make the Complexities of Unit and Lesson Design Manageable) - Softcover

Laurie Robinson Sammons is a national consultant who has used her curriculum expertise and passion for students to help schools develop sustainable professional learning communities (PLCs) in thirty-six US states and eight countries. This includes fidelity to the standards, a consistent analysis of student work, explicit student feedback, quality interventions, and differentiated instruction.

In her thirty-five years as an educator, Laurie has served as an outreach specialist and adjunct professor at the University of North Dakota, district curriculum coordinator of Grand Forks Public Schools, reading specialist, and student-centered practitioner.

Ms. Sammons is skilled in Kagan Cooperative Learning Strategies, Understanding by Design, Robert J. Marzano's instructional strategies, and differentiated instruction.

She was named Teacher of the Year by her colleagues, and in 2002, she received a Fulbright Teacher Scholarship in an exchange program focusing on educational reform in Japan. As an active community member, Laurie has served on many education foundations, such as New Horizons, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping at-risk students in environments of poverty, academic failure, and hopelessness.

Currently a resident of Estero, Florida, Ms. Sammons is an activist in Christy's Cause, raising awareness and advocating prevention for child sex trafficking. Laurie's greatest joys include her family, travel adventures, and golfing.

Dr. Nanci Smith is currently a full-time national and international consultant and featured conference speaker in the areas of mathematics, curriculum and assessment, differentiated instruction, and mathematics professional learning communities. Her work includes professional development in forty-five US states and nine countries. She has taught courses at the high school, undergraduate, and graduate levels.

Nanci is author of three additional books focusing on mathematics. She is the consultant, designer, and author of the Meaningful Math: Leading Students Toward Understanding and Application DVD series and developed an NSF-funded CD and DVD professional development series for middle school mathematics teachers. She has published various chapters in the areas of differentiation, effective mathematics instruction, curriculum design, and standards implementation, and has given interviews for publications and National Public Radio. She has been a featured speaker for the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics national conference as well as numerous other conferences in the United States and abroad.

Nanci received her PhD in curriculum and instruction, mathematics education, from Arizona State University. She is a national board-certified teacher in adolescence and young adulthood/mathematics. She lives in Phoenix, Arizona, with her husband, Russ, and three cats. Her passions are her family, especially her eight (and hopefully more) grandchildren, travel, and knitting.