Consultants
Kent Johnson, Ph.D., M.S.
Joanne Robbins, Ph. D.
Kris Melroe
Elizabeth Street, Ed.D.
Abigail B. Calkin, Ph.D.
Sue Casson
Deb Brown
Elizabeth Swatsky
Clay Starlin, Ed.D.
Elizabeth Haughton
Sonia Lewis
Dr. Kent Johnson founded Morningside Academy, in Seattle, Washington, in 1980, and currently serves as its Executive Director. Morningside is a laboratory school for elementary and middle school children and youth. Morningside investigates effective curriculum materials and teaching methods, and has provided training and consulting in instruction to over 90 schools and agencies throughout the USA and Canada since 1991.
Dr. Johnson has served in all the positions at Morningside, including classroom teacher for 10 years, financial manager, administrator, teacher trainer, school psychologist and school consultant. He has published several seminal papers about research-based curriculum and teaching methods. Most recently he published a book, "The Morningside Model of Generative Instruction: What It Means to Leave No Child Behind," with Dr. Elizabeth Street (2004, Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies). The Morningside Model focuses upon foundation skills in reading, writing, mathematics, thinking, reasoning, problem solving, studying core content, and project-based learning. Over 18,000 students and over a thousand teachers have used the Morningside Model of Generative Instruction. Dr. Johnson is also a co-founder of Headsprout, Inc., a Seattle-based company funded by investors to develop web-based, interactive, cartoon-driven instructional programs. The first product is currently available: Headsprout Early Reading, from headsprout.com.
Prior to founding Morningside, Dr. Johnson was professor at Central Washington University, director of staff training at the Fernald School in Massachusetts, and instructional designer at Northeastern University in Boston. He received his M.S. (1974) and Ph.D. (1977) in psychology at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst under the mentorship of Drs. Beth Sulzer-Azaroff, Ellen Reese, and John Donahue. He received his B.S. in psychology and sociology from Georgetown University (1973), under the mentorship of Dr. J Gilmour Sherman. He also counts Drs. Fred Keller, Charles Ferster, B. F. Skinner, Susan Markle, John Dewey, Robert Gagne, Siegfried Engelmann, Ogden Lindsey, Israel Goldiamond, Arthur Whimbey, and colleague Joe Layng as major influences on his work.
Dr. Johnson enjoys reading philosophy, mysteries, ancient history, psychology, and books about teaching and children. He also enjoys rock, electronic downbeat and ambient music; and talking about politics and public policy.
His recent publications include:
Johnson, K., & Street, E. M. (2004). The Morningside Model of Generative Instruction: An integration of research-based practices. In D. J. Moran & R. Malott (Eds.). Empirically Supported Educational Methods. St. Louis, MO: Elsevier Science/Academic Press.
Johnson, K., & Street, E. M. (2004). The Morningside Model of Generative Instruction: What it means to leave no child behind. Concord, MA: Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies. Available at www.behavior.org.
Joanne Robbins is Associate Director of Morningside Academy in Seattle, WA. Joanne has had over twenty years of experience in program development, curriculum design, teaching and supervision for children with special needs. Joanne's experience has been in both educational and mental health settings. She developed programs for Pre-K through college level. In addition to the gratifying work as Principal of Morningside Academy, Joanne is a founder of P.E.E.R., Partnerships for Educational Excellence and Research. This work has taken the form of professional development and coaching in Port Elizabeth, South Africa.
Prior to moving to Seattle, Joanne lived in Chicago for many years. While there, she was the Activity Therapy supervisor for a 120 bed children's psychiatric facility, served as an adjunct faculty member in the Psychology Department at Northeastern Illinois University, and designed and implemented problem solving and thinking skills programs, study skills programs, and learning acceleration programs for inner-city children and college students for the University of Illinois at Chicago and the City Colleges of Chicago. She also served as program developer and instructor in the federally funded Nation of Tomorrow program, training Chicago teachers how to use computer technology in their classrooms. Joanne served as a research assistant in the Instructional Research and Development Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Joanne was a board member and Vice President of the Illinois Art Therapy Association. She is currently a member of the Association for Behavior Analysis. She founded and co-chairs the Spectrum Alliance, a community group advocating for the Seattle public school's highly capable students.
An expert in the teaching of critical thinking skills, Joanne is the author of Talk Aloud Problem Solving: A Script for Teachers, and co-author of Fluent Thinking Skills: A Generative Approach.
She is a frequent presenter at professional meetings and has published experimental work in human clinical decision-making. Joanne has served as an instructional design consultant to private industry in the production of instructional video and interactive laser disks including Learning-to-Learn, Inc. in Cambridge, MA, and Focus International, Inc. in Huntington, NY.
Prior to moving to Chicago, Joanne earned an MA in Behavioral Sciences (Art Therapy concentration) from the University of Houston, Clear Lake Campus. A native of New York, she earned a BA in Sociology from the State University of New York at New Paltz. Joanne completed her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago under the mentorship of Dr. Sue Markle, Dr. Phil Tiemann and Dr. Herbert Walberg.
Kris Melroe earned a BA from Luther College in 1971. After graduating, she worked in the Minneapolis area on numerous community based projects including founding a clinic that specialized in women's health. She also did research for a NGO (non-governmental United Nations organization) health project, examining sterilization and birth control practices on four Indian reservations. Her findings were used in planning the United Nations "Decade of the Woman" and resulted in her receiving the 1983 National Recognition Award from the group Women of All Red Nations..
In 1976 Kris left the Midwest and moved to Seattle, where she worked in various capacities with different social service groups, including serving as co-director for the Lesbian Resource Center.
Kris has always been drawn to working with children Being drawn to the field of education, Kris received her teaching certificate and later her Special Education endorsement from the University of Washington. Kris joined Morningside in 1980, where she remained for five years as an elementary teacher. Here she honed her skills in instruction and precision teaching. After taking some time off to have two children, Kris returned to teaching where she worked for the Renton School District as a Special Education teacher for eight years. While in Renton, Kris designed and implemented a precision teaching training program for new special education teachers. She was also a member of the Renton Education Association's negotiating team. Kris has served as a faculty member at Pacific Oaks College, teaching a graduate class in Special Education.
Kris returned to Morningside in 1999 to work with the Morningside Teachers' Academy. She is currently the administrative supervisor for MTA.
Elizabeth (Libby) Street is a PSIP consultant. She also is the special assistant to the president and a professor of psychology at Central Washington University in nearby Ellensburg, WA. She received her bachelor's degree (1968) in math education at West Virginia University. She later completed an MA (1969) and an Ed.D. (1977) in educational psychology at West Virginia University, where she studied with Dr. Julie Vargas. Dr. Street moved to Illinois to work in Dr. Sidney Bijou's Child Behavior Laboratory at the University of Illinois in 1971 and later became director of HEED School in Champaign, Illinois. HEED school was the first private day treatment program for emotionally disturbed children in the state of Illinois. Libby also served as the director of the adolescent unit of Adolph Meyer Mental Health Center before taking a faculty position in the Department of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin - LaCrosse. In Lacrosse, Libby prepared special education teachers and school psychologists and served as a consultant to a variety of schools and agencies serving special needs populations.
In 1978, Libby moved to Ellensburg, Washington where she served briefly as the director of the children and family unit at the Comprehensive Mental Health Center of Central Washington. In 1979, she accepted a faculty position at Central Washington University. In her role as professor of psychology, she prepares undergraduate and graduate psychology majors and teaches courses in educational psychology for teaching candidates. She continues to serve as a consultant and trainer for schools and agencies. Although she continues to teach classes, she now serves as special assistant to the university's president.
Dr. Street was an American Psychological Association - AAAS congressional science fellow during the 1994-95 academic year. During that year, she served on the education staff of Senator Edward Kennedy, Libby has had a 20-year association with Morningside Academy, serving as a member of the board of directors, as a consultant and trainer, and as a co-coordinator for the Morningside Summer School Institute.
Abigail Calkin began her work with exceptional children in 1959 at Wallace Center in Colorado. In 1965, she started the first learning disabilities classroom in the state of Oregon, in Eugene. Since then, she has also worked in other parts of Oregon, as well as Washington, Kansas, and Alaska. She has continuously used Precision Teaching's Standard Celeration Chart since 1967. She received her M.A. in Special Education under Barbara Bateman and her Ph.D. under Odgen Lindsley, the founder of Precision Teaching. Abigail's specialty is inner behavior--the counting and charting of thoughts, feelings, and urges.
Additionally, she has been a college professor, school psychologist,and public school principal. Her chart-based learning center, formerly in Kansas, is now in Alaska. Her numerous articles and presentations focus on Precision Teaching and the Standard Celeration Chart. She was on the editorial board of the Journal of Precision Teaching & Celeration for 19 years, and is a member of the Standard Celeration Society and of the Association of Behavior Analysis.*
Abigail is a past president of the Standard Celeration Society. Living in southeast bush Alaska with her husband, she focuses on writing and is finishing a book on inner behavior. She is the great-granddaughter of Canadian educator, historian, and author, John B. Calkin.* She has had two books in special education, two novels, and over 30 poems published.
Suzanne (Sue) Casson was trained and taught at Morningside Academy for 11 years, from 1984 until 1995. For several of those years she trained and supervised teachers. During the later years, Sue was Assistant Director, participating in student intake, assessment, program placement and consulting with parents as well as other administrative activities. Throughout her tenure at Morningside, Sue contributed heavily to curriculum and instructional design, analyzing student component skill deficits and addressing those needs.
In 1994, Sue went home to Illinois to celebrate her motheris 90th birthday and knew it was time for her mother to have a member of the family living with her. She moved to Illinois in 1995, started Precision Tutoring, a learning center, and has been working with children in reading, math, and study skills in her community ever since.
In her life before Morningside, Sue raised three sons, and worked in many capacities including: a street worker with youth gangs, draft counselor, a manager and worker in a worker-owned cooperative recycling company, a AFSME union member and steward, and a community organizer for a community development corporation that helped develop low-income and disabled, cooperatively owned housing.
Sue has always had a garden, and now raises peaches, pears, apricots, cherries, blueberries, hardneck garlic and many other vegetables, herbs, and flowers, and has the beginnings of a small native prairie. She is a member of the Association for Behavioral Analysis, the Standard Celeration Society, The Land Institute, the Pecatonica-Sugar River Ecosystem Partnership and is a consulting editor of The Journal of Precision Teaching and Celeration.
Deb earned her MS degree in Psychology with an emphasis in Behavior Analysis from CSU Stanislaus. She earned a BS in Speech and Language Pathology and Audiology at UCSB in 1985. She currently works as an Education Specialist for Stanislaus County Office of Education where she consults classrooms and trains regular and special education staff and teachers.
Deb started working with special needs students in 1984 at the UC Santa Barbara Autism Clinic under the supervision of Dr. Robert Koegel. She then worked for several non-public agencies and schools that used Behavior Analysis to serve children and adults with autism, speech disorders, severe behavior problems and other developmental delays. These agencies included Zonta Childrenis Center under the supervision of Dr. Mary Ann Powers; S.T.A.R.S. School in collaboration with Dr. Mark Sunberg and Therapeutic Pathways under the direction of Dr. Jane Howard.
Deb has extensively studied and worked with Curriculum Development, Direct Instruction and Fluency. She worked as a teacher trainer, and later as the coordinator, at the CSU Stanislaus Center for Direct Instruction under the direction of Dr. Cathy Watkins. She directed a summer program for at-risk students for 5 consecutive years. She attended the Morningside Summer Institute in 1995. She has been an active member of the Association for Behavior Analysis and the California Association for Behavior Analysis for over 15 years. She has both attended and presented at professional conferences and has published in The Journal of Verbal Behavior.
Deb is committed to research-based practices in education. Her goal is for every student to be an active learner. She particularly enjoys training teachers and instructional staff to use the tools that are necessary for their students to be successful. Her other interests include teaching her preschool-aged daughter to read!
Elizabeth (Beth) Swatsky taught elementary and middle school students at Morningside Academy in Seattle for several years. After teaching several years, Beth accepted a full-scholarship to The Pennsylvania State University's Autism Specialist Program and received a M.Ed. in the Special Education Department. She is currently the Autism Support Coordinator for Ann Arbor Public Schools in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Beth started consulting for Morningside Teachers' Academy in 2002. Beth has worked with children and adults with special needs for the past 10 years in a variety of settings.
Beth has presented at numerous international psychology and education conferences around the country. She maintains memberships with Association for Applied Behavior Analysis, Standard Celeration Society and Association for Direct Instruction.
Beth enjoys conversation about education and learning. She likes to spend free time making beads from Venetian glass and listening to live music.
Clay attended the University of Oregon for both undergraduate and graduate education, receiving his Doctor of Education degree in Special Education and Educational Measurement in 1970.
During the past 35 years, he has lived in four different parts of the U.S. and worked in public school, university and human service settings. These experiences have involved teaching children in clinical settings, university teaching, public school supervision, self-employed educational consulting and coordinating a state office program.
He has provided consultations throughout North America and internationally in the areas of: basic skills; content knowledge skills; behavior management; measurement and evaluation (individual and overall program); screening, assessment and individual program implementation; mainstreaming, individualized instruction and policy development. These consultations have involved pre-school through college level personnel.
He is professionally interested in the following areas: individualizing education for all students, educational measurement and international literacy.
Elizabeth Haughton has, for over 30 years, devoted her professional life to providing children and adults with programs that guarantee learning success. Combining teaching with science Elizabeth works with students who need development of their visual, auditory, language and motor processing systems. She has operationalized and honed the ground breaking work of Eric Haughton, which demonstrated that learning rates accelerate once a student obtains a certain optimum level of fluency in the basic component skills of reading, math, and other academic areas.
In Elizabeth's work student fluency levels are measured after which instructional procedures and learning materials are designed and applied to increase skills to required levels. Precision Teaching, a unique and highly effective measurement system, is used to quantify fluency levels and then employed to monitor and predict student progress allowing teachers to offer highly individualized courses of instruction at optimum rates of learning. Attainment of fluency in foundation skills leads to the improved retention, greater endurance, and ease of application to new unpracticed materials.
Elizabeth has trained numerous educators and parents on how to identify a child's strengths and needs, determine how best a child's performance can match his/her potential, and then implement and measure highly efficient learning programs. She has repeatedly demonstrated, that with consistent, dedicated instruction, ongoing measurement, well designed practice materials and the student's involvement in decision making, learning success is possible for anyone.
In addition to fifteen years of teaching students in public schools, both in the United States and Canada, Elizabeth has been for the past fifteen years director and a learning specialist at the Haughton Learning Center. She has also been an educational consultant to schools and agencies, a professional teacher trainer, and is the author of several Precision Teaching and fluency-building instructional programs, including Phonological Coding, Rapid Automatic Naming, Mathematics Tool Skills, and Handwriting. Having consulted with Morningside Academy for over ten years she is also currently consults with schools in California, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire.
