ASCD Presenter Bio

Marie Alcock

As president of Learning Systems Associates (LSA), Dr. Marie Alcock serves as a national and international education consultant. Working with the American Education and Research Association and People to People, Alcock has traveled to countries to share and learn about what countries are working on in the field of education.

In her role as president of LSA, Alcock serves as a national and international education consultant. In addition, she is currently on the faculty of Walden University’s School of Education, where she serves as a lead professor in curriculum, instruction, and assessment practices. She has spent the last 23 years working in public and private education as a teacher administrator. She has taught in Vermont, North Carolina, New Jersey, and New York City schools. A public advocate, she founded the nonprofit TEN list (Tomorrow’s Education Network), which is dedicated to connecting the greater community with students in the classroom to improve student literacy.

Under her direction, LSA specializes in leadership, mapping, professional learning communities, and educational change. LSA works to assist school organizations from the beginning to the end of the process as they evolve into learning organizations. LSA recognizes that for change to succeed, the school or district must be able to continue the work and continue to determine the best solutions for their problems.

LSA acknowledges the unique characteristics of large and small schools be they public or private, urban or rural, and customizes work to meet each school’s unique needs. These adaptations and modifications ultimately get LSA clients to their goal, which is improved student achievement. A unique segment of LSA's services provide inexpensive and highly effective solutions to the student mobility issues prevalent in many schools today.

An acknowledged leader in the field of curriculum mapping and 21st century curriculum instruction and assessment practices, Alcock uses school mapping as the hub for LSA's work, making the work meaningful quickly and saving time in the mapping process. Alcock makes the map data useful as quickly as possible through the process of multipurpose mapping. This process achieves both short and long term goals. Alcock has been working with schools to improve student motivation and literacy skills through Web 2.0 tools.

Schools embracing a number of initiatives benefit from working with Alcock and her team as they make connections between any number of initiatives and maximize the efficacy of teachers' resources and efforts. Alcock and her team will customize a network for any collection of initiatives, but a sample might include any of the following: upgrading to 21st century standards, curriculum, instructional practices, assessments, Understanding by Design® framework, differentiated instruction, interdisciplinary units, habits of mind and emotional reading, vocabulary building, essential questions, standards-based learning, formative and summative assessments, and triangulation of data.

Alcock is on the cutting edge of work concerning student mobility and the unique needs mobile students bring to schools and districts. She has been researching and documenting the needs of mobile students and the schools they attend. In her dissertation, Alcock lists 10 suggestions for educators working with mobile students that are both inexpensive and highly effective.