Who We Are and What We Believe
Students want to understand—they’re hardwired to understand. They love to be surprised and challenged by the depth and quality of their insights, but their propensity to express complex thinking is very dependent upon our teaching. We have far more capacity to foster engagement and understanding than we may realize.
When I work side-by-side and online with teachers and other education leaders throughout this country and abroad, I recognize that our beliefs about students’ learning potential shape so much of what we do in classrooms. The extraordinary growth I’ve witnessed in children and teachers convinces me that all students can live intellectually engaged lives.
Mosaic Literacy's purpose is three-fold:
To enable teachers to understand the inherent intellectual and learning capacity of each student;
To develop educators’ awareness of equity issues in schools and to use literacy and inquiry-based instruction to ensure all students’ voices and identities are valued;
To support teachers, instructional coaches, and other school leaders as they develop a repertoire of research-supported effective practices to enhance literacy learning; and,
To foster a school culture that promotes on-going professional learning.
Mosaic Literacy is uniquely positioned to fulfill these four purposes because we understand and synthesize literacy research, allowing teachers to translate the research into successful practices in the classroom.
Ellin Oliver Keene
Ellin Oliver Keene has been a classroom teacher, staff developer, non-profit director and adjunct professor of reading and writing. For sixteen years she directed staff development initiatives at the Denver-based Public Education & Business Coalition. She served as Deputy Director and Director of Literacy and Staff Development for the Cornerstone Project at the University of Pennsylvania for 4 years. Ellin works with schools and districts throughout the country and abroad. Her emphasis is long-term, school-based professional development and strategic planning for literacy learning. She serves as senior advisor at Heinemann, overseeing the Heinemann Fellows initiative and is the editor of the Heinemann Catalogue/Journal.
Ellin is currently at work on The Literacy Studio focused on an up-to-date conceptualization of Readers/Writers’ workshop. She is the author of Engaging Children: Igniting the Drive for Deeper Learning (2018), is co-editor and co-author of The Teacher You Want to Be: Essays about Children, Learning, and Teaching (Heinemann, 2015); co-editor of the Not This, but That series (Heinemann, 2013 - 2015); author of Talk About Understanding: Rethinking Classroom Talk to Enhance Understanding (Heinemann, 2012), To Understand: New Horizons in Reading Comprehension (Heinemann, 2008), co-author of Comprehension Going Forward (Heinemann, 2011), co-author of Mosaic of Thought: The Power of Comprehension Strategy Instruction, 2nd edition (Heinemann, 2007, 1st edition, 1997) and author of Assessing Comprehension Thinking Strategies (Shell Educational Books, 2006) as well as numerous chapters for professional books and journals on the teaching of reading as well as education policy journals.
David Keene
David is the Business Director at Mosaic Literacy LLC. He has been a practicing attorney, an author, and an editor of legal and other written materials, since 1977.