RAPSA Feature Blog: 

Ask the Author with David Bouchard

Best-selling author and presenter David Bouchard has touched the lives of thousands of children, teachers, and parents with his stories.  Mr. Bouchard, whose passions include reading and writing, art and music and dance, aboriginal people and culture, has published more than 35 titles...including: I am Raven, An Aboriginal Carol, If You Are Not From the Prairie, C'est du Hockey, Notes to My Daughter, and The Gift of Reading.

Noted Educator Ron Clark to Speak at the 5th Annual RAPS Conference

Ron Clark has been called "America's Educator." In 2000, he was named Disney's American Teacher of the Year. He is a New York Times bestselling author whose book, The Essential 55, has sold over 1 million copies and has been published in 25 different countries. He has been featured on The Today Show, CNN, and Oprah, and Ms. Winfrey even named him as her first "Phenomenal Man." His classes have been honored at the White House on three separate occasions. Ron's teaching experiences in New York City are the subject of the uplifting film, The Ron Clark Story, starring Matthew Perry, better known as Chandler from Friends.

Erin Gruwell, an inner-city school teacher whose story inspired the film “Freedom Writers,” spoke to a rapt audience of educators at the 4th Annual Reaching At-Promise Students National Conference on February 22, 2009.  Using her experience as a backdrop, Gruwell discussed how teachers and administrators could become catalysts for change at their school sites.

“I believe in teaching to a student,” Gruwell noted.  “It doesn’t matter where they came from; it matters where they’re headed.”  She implored her audience to “teach to a kid to help him find the potential” and reflected that “every single one of [her] students has some kind of journey, some kind of odyssey.”

Gruwell’s keynote was on the final day of a three-day conference for elementary and secondary educators working with at-risk students.  This event brought an international contingent of educators together to learn relevant and practical instructional strategies and leadership methods. 

Co-sponsored by the School for Integrated Academics and Technologies (SIATech) and the Reaching At-Promise Students Association (RAPSA), this comprehensive professional development event included presentations by premier educators Dr. Ruby Payne and Dr. Lorraine Monroe.