"FASL has created a refreshing and extraordinary opportunity to provide a 21st Century learner-focused professional experience for teachers and administrators. The expertise and depth of knowledge that Christine and Dick offer facilitates the learning of teachers who are striving to meet the needs of a new generation of digital and media-saturated learners. Their work has been a re-birth for the professional practice of our teachers. They are pioneers in professional development who are establishing a new precedence for 21st Century teaching and learning."
Betty Burks
Former Deputy Superintendent, Curriculum and Instruction and Special Campus Programs, San Antonio ISD, Texas
"FASL’s Rural School Initiative is exposing our teachers to cutting edge information that is only available if we drive in excess of 200-300 miles to larger cities. Our budget does not allow that. This format exposes our teachers to information that is only available to larger districts with larger budgets. Small schools deserve this type of professional development and this format makes it possible."
O.K. (Buddy) Wolfenbarger III
Superintendent, Comstock ISD, Texas
"I’ve taught the same course for eight years and I have never felt so secure in my “art” as I do now that I have applied what I learned in the FASL sessions to my lessons."
Jennifer Lankes
Fox Tech High School
"I am a skeptic, an academic who analyzes each text she reads in an attempt to discover its inherent flaws. I am not one who is persuaded easily. In order for a training series to be successful, it must present a compelling argument and follow that argument with impressive and solid evidence. Most trainings that I have experienced have only disappointed. The vast majority regurgitate the same information disguised as something new and revolutionary. Under careful examination, the new is revealed to be nothing but the old. It is with this doubter’s mindset that I first approached FASL. Although I was intrigued by the images of art displayed and the atmosphere of excitement buzzing around the room, I prepared myself to be underwhelmed. Instead, I was revolutionized as a teacher. For the first time in my career, I learned to appreciate the true meaning of collaboration—a most bandied about term that, for me, had really ceased to denote anything of substance. Through our discussions, ranging from the academic to the creative to the amusing, I melded with my cohort and they became a part of me. Like the great salons or artistic cafes of the nineteenth century, FASL becomes a space where the possibility for innovation is endless. The environment fostered by FASL allows for the creation of a truly alchemical atmosphere where individual minds merge into a larger, focused entity. Through the partnerships I have formed at FASL, I have worked closely with teachers from other campuses in my district to refine the structure of my content. FASL has endowed me with a new appreciation of practice, repetition, abstraction and re-imagination. Out of context these words mean nothing, but within the scope of FASL they mean everything. I have seen not only my skills as an instructor improve, but I have seen tangible, measurable results in my students. When I examine my students’ writing and see the vast improvement they have shown or when I moderate a discussion on Derby’s An Experiment on a Bird in a Vacuum Pump and its relationship to themes in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a discussion that I never would have thought possible before in my inner-city classroom, I need no further proof that FASL is transformative."
Laura Davenport, PhD
Fox Tech High School, SAISD
“THE ART OF LEARNING is a fabulous merging of brain and learning theory and art history. Who would expect to think that we can learn how to teach students by attending to the ways in which master artists learned their craft? Drew and Erdmann bring a dynamic focus to learning with a creative and focused approach that is both captivating and informing. A MUST READ for educators!”
Dr. Sarah Jerome
Superintendent, Arlington Heights SD25 and past president of AASA Arlington Heights, Illinois
“FASL has changed not only how I teach, but also how I learn. Before FASL, most of my reading was in the fields of education and history. Through our training, I have read works by neuroscientists, psychologists, art historians, journalists and economists. All of these works have given me the language to articulate concepts that I have intuitively sensed but not been able to express. With this new language I am able to refine ideas that were vague and shifting. This new language has also helped me communicate more effectively with my colleagues, so that collectively we can begin to address the barriers to learning in our school. Thank you, Dick and Christine, for helping me discover my own creativity and giving me the tools to inspire my students to do the same.”
Michelle LaFontain
Edison High School
"I feel that I have a nice new lens to look through at my teaching strategies. I feel that at last I am discovering the art of teaching."
Kathryn King
AP Biology Teacher
That’s what makes the FASL Institutes so different. They know that there is no pill, no cure for all, but instead they provide the knowledge and wisdom to enhance the teachers’ learning. FASL understands that the teacher is the program and the only way to improve student achievement is to improve the quality of the teacher. This training is not a one-day training, nor would I even call it training. It is professional growth that every educator needs to experience. If you want to walk away with a binder of someone else’s lessons, this is not for you. However, if you want to master the art of teaching by continually improving your lessons by making them more engaging and rigorous, this is what you want to attend.
FASL brings concepts from art to neuroscience and teaches you to explore a new approach to teaching. I can say that I have tried some practices in my classroom I might never have thought of without their help. Being a mathematics educator, I was never asked to be creative, but that is something that is hard to escape from when attending FASL. For example, the idea of reframing or even clarifying the importance of repetition are topics that I utilize now. Most importantly you have the opportunity to build relationships with colleagues, as well as with Richard and Christine, who will treat you with respect and with pure professionalism.
FASL brings concepts from art to neuroscience and teaches you to explore a new approach to teaching. I can say that I have tried some practices in my classroom I might never have thought of without their help. Being a mathematics educator, I was never asked to be creative, but that is something that is hard to escape from when attending FASL. For example, the idea of reframing or even clarifying the importance of repetition are topics that I utilize now. Most importantly you have the opportunity to build relationships with colleagues, as well as with Richard and Christine, who will treat you with respect and with pure professionalism.
Martin Alvarez
Mathematics Teacher