Instructors - Online Camps International

ONLINE CAMPS INTERNATIONAL

Instructors

Carl Anderson

Carl Anderson, one of the co-founders of ONLINE CAMPS INTERNATIONAL is a consultant known around the world as the expert on how to work one-to-one with writers in kindergarten through 12th grade. For nearly two decades, teachers have turned to his bestselling book, How’s It Going? A Practical Guide to Conferring with Student Writers, to learn how to have powerful conversations with students about their writing. Carl is also the author of Assessing Writers, Strategic Writing Conferences, and A Teacher’s Guide to Writing Conferences. Teachers relish the chance to improve how they confer with young writers by watching Carl do so, and by getting his feedback after he watches them confer. In his years teaching elementary and middle school, Carl worked in many settings – urban, small town, and suburban, from the Bronx, to Bardstown, Kentucky, where he was Teacher of the Year, to Northbrook, Illinois. Carl lives in Brooklyn with his family. He enjoys sailing, cooking, playing his guitar, coaching Little League baseball and serving on the board of SFX Youth Sports.

Katherine Bomer

A poet and essayist who was a classroom teacher for ten years, Katherine Bomer is one of the field’s most gifted writers and writing teachers. She author of many books on teaching writing, including The Journey is Everything: Teaching Essays that Children Want to Write for People Who Want to Read Them and Writing a Life: Teaching Memoir to Sharpen Insight, Shape Meaning—And Triumph Over Tests. In her consulting work, Katherine she combines a teacher’s practical advice, a writer’s love of language, and a powerful plea for social justice. She lives in Denton, Texas, with her husband, Randy Bomer, with whom she wrote the book, For a Better World: Reading and Writing for Social Action.

Karen Caine

In more than 25 years as an educator, Karen Caine has been a teacher, staff developer, curriculum director, adjunct professor and literacy consultant. She is a frequent presenter at national conferences and is the author of Writing to Persuade: Minilessons to Help Students Plan, Draft, and Revise. Karen specializes helping teachers study what students know, assess how they learn, inspire them to believe in themselves, and teach them how to use their unique strengths and ideas. She believes students need to be explicitly taught how to reread their own writing so they can revise their work with greater intention and attention to detail. Karen’s work is filled with clear practical information about what it means to write well. She also infuses joy, humor, close observation, and relationship-building into everything she does. With Karen, students not only learn how to work through the writing process with the qualities of good writing in mind, but also become motivated to work on their own writing projects in the future.

Kathy Collins

Kathy Collins is an international consultant and author of books on teaching students reading skills that lead them to independence, intention and joy as readers including Growing Readers, Reading for Real, and I Am Reading (with coauthor Matt Glover). Teachers flock to her workshops because she’s insightful and funny and, with practical examples and accessible metaphors always up her sleeve, gets concepts across easily. Kathy always wanted to be a teacher. “I used to fantasize about wearing a masking tape roll on my wrist, writing on a chalkboard and collecting book order money.” These days, she says: “I love wrapping my mind around a child in order to figure out how best to meet their learning needs and support their hopes for themselves.” She lives in New Hampshire and has two teenage boys, one of whom has Type 1 diabetes. Kathy likes to read and to run, and is trying to learn how to knit, cook and speak Spanish.

Dan Feigelson

Dan Feigelson, a thought leader in the field of literacy education, has worked as an elementary school teacher, principal and NYC superintendent responsible for overseeing 30 elementary and middle schools. He is the author of Reading Projects Reimagined and Practical Punctuation. Dan is known for showcasing how putting children in the driver’s seat as decision makers helps them develop voice and agency. Dan leads institutes, workshops and lab sites on the teaching of reading and writing for teachers throughout the United States, Europe, South America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and also conducts intensive reading and writing workshops for elementary and middle school students around the world. Dan is also an accomplished jazz musician and composer. A native New Yorker, when not traveling the world he now divides his time between Manhattan and the Hudson Valley, where he enjoys hiking and gardening.

Sonia Feigelson

Sonia Feigelson is an award-winning professional writer and teacher who has worked with children in elementary, middle and high school as well as with college students. She holds an MFA in Fiction from New York University, where she has been an adjunct professor for undergraduate courses on creative writing. Sonia teaches students to develop their critical thinking and close-reading muscles, and helps them clarify the structural, creative and analytic elements of their writing. When working with her, children can expect no word, thought, or question to remain unturned—she is attentive to detail, thorough, and believes wholeheartedly in cultivating the joy of academic expression in the next generation of thinkers. Sonia has published short fiction, creative non-fiction and book reviews and edited literary journals. She has also been acting professionally since age 12.

Matt Glover

A former elementary school teacher and principal, Matt Glover is an internationally-known education consultant and the author of six books on teaching reading and writing, including Craft and Process Studies and Engaging Young Writers. Matt has decades of experience working with students at all ability levels, meeting them where they are as learners, and accelerating their learning. Not only respected for his vast knowledge, Matt is also known across the field for his demeanor. Warm, soft-spoken and confident, Matt has a wonderful way with children, and the precision of his work is matched by his passion. Matt is a recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award for Contributions to the Field of Education from Wake Forest University, his undergraduate alma mater. He lives in Ohio and has four children – a son who recently graduated from college, a daughter who is a college senior, and twin daughters who are in high school.

Chris Hall

Chris Hall has been a middle-school language arts teacher for over 20 years, working in public and private schools in the U.S. and internationally. He served as a Heinemann Fellow from 2016-18, collaborating with 10 other innovative educators from around the country. Chris has presented workshops about writing at national conferences, published numerous articles for teachers, and is currently writing a book for Heinemann about helping students overcome resistance to revision. He leads an action research group in his school district, inviting educators to examine their own teaching and breathe new life into their practice. Chris lives in seacoast New Hampshire with his wife, two daughters, and West Highland terrier, and he loves hiking with this crew in the White Mountains.

Towanda Harris

A former elementary school teacher, Towanda Harris is an Instructional Leadership Coordinator in an urban school district in Atlanta, Georgia. She is the author of The Right Tools: A Guide to Selecting, Evaluating, and Implementing Classroom Resources and Practices. Educators rely on her wisdom about how to find resources that meet their teaching goals and match their understanding of their students’ needs. Teachers turn to Towanda to learn how to employ those resources, blend them with best practices, and help students reach their full potential. Towanda lives in Atlanta with her husband and three children, who are in middle school, high school, and college, and likes to do a lot of crafting.

Georgia Heard

Georgia Heard is a renowned poet and teacher of poetry writing. Her newest children’s book is Boom! Bellow! Bleat!: Animal Poems for Two Or More Voices. Georgia is also the author of many books for teachers on teaching writing, such as For the Good of the Earth and Sun and Awakening the Heart. She brings a poet’s ear and a teacher’s know-how to every aspect of writing instruction. Georgia has been working with children since the day when, while an MFA student at Columbia University’s Program in Writing, she was invited to talk about poetry with kindergarteners in Brooklyn and was astounded by the beauty of the poems those young students shared with her. She has a son in college and lives in South Florida, where she loves to walk on the beach and search for sea glass.

Ellin Keene

Ellin Keene is a former classroom teacher, staff developer, non-profit director and adjunct professor of reading and writing. She is a writer, consultant and editor, and serves as a senior advisor to Heinemann, a premier publisher of books and provider of resources for teachers. Ellin is the author of many books on teaching, including one of the field’s most important books on teaching reading, Mosaic of Thought, which she co-wrote with Susan Zimmermann. Her most recent books include Engaging Children: Igniting a Drive for Deeper Learning and The Teacher You Want to Be: Essays about Children, Learning, and Teaching, which she co-edited with Matt Glover. For sixteen years she directed staff development initiatives at the Denver-based Public Education & Business Coalition and she served as Deputy Director and Director of Literacy and Staff Development for the Cornerstone Project at the University of Pennsylvania for four years. Ellin has a young adult daughter and lives in Denver, where she likes to read, garden and study aviation.

Amy Ludwig VanDerwater

Amy Ludwig Van Derwater has taught writing for 20 years, including her years spent teaching 5th grade and her years as a writing consultant. She is the author of many beloved children’s books, including Forest Has a Song and Write! Write! Write! Amy is also the author of Poems Are Teachers: How Studying Poetry Strengthens Writing in All Genres. She also is keeper of two popular classroom blogs, The Poem Farm and Sharing Our Notebooks. Whether it’s cookies, a hat or a poem, Amy is always happiest making things. She lives in an old farmhouse in Holland, NY that is bordered by field and forest, and often brings nature into her writing and into her teaching. Amy has three children, two daughters and a son, and they are all in college at the same time!

Jessica Martin

Jessica Martin a former classroom teacher, staff developer at the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project and resident advisor at UCLA’s Teacher Education Program, is the author of the book, Strategic Classroom Design. She is the CEO of the education consulting organization Growing Educators. Jessica is grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with educators and learning communities committed to co-creating incredible spaces, amplifying student voices, and implementing equitable learning opportunities for all learners. When she is not in schools, you can usually find her with her four kids – 14-year-old twins, a 12-year-old and a 9-year-old – at the beach, shooting hoops in the driveway, or watching and drawing cartoons at home in Los Angeles.

Melissa Onstad

Melissa Onstad is a queer parent, reader, writer and longtime middle school teacher. In her role as a Gender and Sexuality Alliance advisor, she has supported adolescents and teens in transforming their school communities into more LGBTQ+ affirming spaces. Helping young people define and pursue their own goals is central to her teaching. Melissa recently left the classroom to write YA and middle grade fiction featuring queer characters. This year, her work was awarded first prize in fiction from Martha’s Vineyard Institute for Creative Writing. Originally from small-town California, she now lives in Brooklyn with her wife, whom she has married three times (it’s a long story). They have two children, ages 10 and 7. Melissa gets a thrill out of matching readers with books, so you can find her middle grade and YA book recommendations on Instagram @heymsonstad.

Connie Pertuz-Meza

Connie Pertuz-Meza writes stories about her life, family, and ancestors. Connie has been an educator for two decades in the New York City public school system. Having found safety and validation in school, she works to recreate those feelings for students in her classroom. Connie is also a mother of a sixteen-year-old daughter and twelve-year-old son. Connie’s writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Kweli Literary Journal, Raising Mothers, Dreamers Creative Writing, Voices In The Middle, the Acentos Review, MUTHA, Latina Outsiders: Remaking Latina Identity Anthology, La Pluma y La Tinta Peinate Anthology, and La Pluma y La Tinta Emerging Voices Anthology. She is a 2017 Brooklyn Film and Arts Festival Non-Fiction Prize Finalist and Honorable Mention. Connie is also a three-time VONA/Voices Fiction Fellow, an alum of Las Dos Brujas writing workshop, a Cullman Teaching Institute Fellow, a Tin House Craft Intensive participant, and a Kweli Fellow. Connie is working on a semi-autobiographical YA novel, and is a staff writer for the online literary magazine, hispanecdotes.com.

Hannah Schneewind

A former first and second grade teacher at the New International School of Thailand—United Nations Related in Bangkok, and at PS 321 in Brooklyn, and in Westport, CT, Hannah Schneewind is an education consultant and the co-author of Trusting Readers: Imagining New Possibilities for Readers (Heinemann, 2021). Hannah is the consummate primary teacher and the creator of widely-adopted school curriculums. She is steadfast about the interactive read-aloud in K-5 classrooms, giving children time to read independently, and the importance of conferring with students about their reading and writing. Hannah lives in Westport and has three teenage children, each with their own interests and learning styles. Her eldest, a daughter, is studying to be an engineer; her middle child, a son, is at conservatory and plans to become a concert violinist; and her youngest son, a ninth grader, was recently the lead in a school musical.

Vicki Vinton

Vicki Vinton is a writer and consultant who works in schools across the world. She is the author of What Readers Really Do: Teaching the Process of Meaning Making, Dynamic Teaching for Deeper Reading and The Power of Grammar: Unconventional Approaches to the Conventions of Language. Under her full name, Victoria Vinton, she is the author of The Jungle Law, which People magazine called “a lyrical and elegant first novel.” She has taught writing at Queens College and NYU and lives in Brooklyn. Vicki’s blog, tomakeaprarie.com, which was inspired by a poem by Emily Dickinson, celebrates reading, writing, teaching and the joys of a literate life.

READING & WRITING
ONLINE SUMMER CAMPS

World-Renowned Educators
Working with Your Child

READING & WRITING ONLINE SUMMER CAMPS

World-Renowned Educators Working with Your Child

READING & WRITING
ONLINE SUMMER CAMPS

World-Renowned Educators
Working with Your Child