Sarah Irvine Belson, PhD, Dean, Associate Professor, American University School of Education teaches EDU-502 Methods of Managing Pupils with Behavior Disorders, EDU-541 Foundations of Special Education for Exceptional Children, and EDU-545 Overview of All Exceptionalities: The Arts in Special Education. Dr. Irvine Belson received her PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from Arizona State University and specializes in technology in special education. Her research activities focus on infusing effective components of instructional design with emerging technology across the field of education, particularly for students with exceptionalities. Dr. Irvine has trained pre-service and in-service special education teachers in the area of electronic communication and technology integration. Through field-based research, she has successfully worked to integrate Internet-based activities into educational programs for rural and at-risk K-12 students. Her background in special education provides a knowledge-base for development of the types of support that assist educators to adaptively respond to a variety of individual differences in learning strategies among students.
sarah@american.edu
Alida Anderson, PhD, Assistant Professor, teaches EDU 541 Foundations of Special Education for Exceptional Children and EDU 646 Learning Disabilities II. Dr. Anderson received her doctorate in special education from the University of Maryland, College Park. Anderson’s research and teaching interests include language development and literacy acquisition in diverse populations. Her dissertation research focused on the development of literate oral language by preschool age children with language impairments and typical language. Currently, Anderson examines relationships between cross-linguistic features of tone and English reading ability in school age native Chinese and Korean bilingual English speakers, and monolingual English speakers with reading disabilities. Another area of research has been in the development and implementation of a response-to-intervention mathematics practice for teaching place value and number concepts to primary grade students with diverse language and learning needs in distressed urban school settings. Recent presentations have included papers at international conferences of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, the Council for Exceptional Children, and the National Council for the Teachers of Mathematics.
aanderso@american.edu
Jennifer Durham, PhD, Adjunct Professor, teaches EDU 605 Psycho-educational Assessment. Dr. Durham received her doctorate in special education and arts integration from George Mason University. Dr. Durham’s areas of research, writing, and teaching include integrating the arts into the non-arts curriculum, utilizing backwards design in instructional assessment, and the role of the arts in the education of children with learning disabilities. Dr. Durham also supervises graduate teaching interns at the Lab School of Washington. She is currently working on several articles for publication related to the ways in which the arts develop cognitive processes and personal dispositions for children with learning disabilities.
durham@american.edu
Mary Allen Edgerton, PhD, teaches EDU-671 Foundations of Reading: Diagnosis and Remediation and is the Classroom Curriculum Coordinator for The Lab School of Washington. Dr. Edgerton also supervises The Lab School internships for graduate students. After receiving her BA from Drew University in 1991, Dr. Edgerton became a student in the MA program in Special Education: Learning Disabilities at American University, at The Lab School. After five years as a classroom teacher at The Lab School, Dr. Edgerton left to pursue her doctorate in Special Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. There she concentrated her PhD on reading disabilities. Dr. Edgerton returned to The Lab School to direct the Summer School Tutoring program in 1997 and 1998 and became the Director of the Tutoring Training Program in 1999. She is beginning her 14th year at The Lab School developing new curriculum with and for the Lower School classroom teachers and assisting Junior High and High School reading and English. She is doing direct, daily supervision of the American University Interns in Lab School classrooms.
edgerton@american.edu
Leila Kramer, Adjunct Professor, has a Master’s in Clinical Social Work from Barry University, Miami, Florida and a Master’s in Special Education: Learning Disabilities from The American University, Washington, DC, and is a certified life coach. She works at The Lab School of Washington as head of Tutoring Services – which provides tutoring for students who do not attend The Lab School of Washington.
Leila.kramer@labschool.org
Evelyn Novins, Adjunct Professor, teaches Foundations of Reading: Diagnostic and Remediation. She is a graduate of Rockford College with a major in Economics and an MA from Teachers College, Columbia University. She has been at The Lab School of Washington since 1985 as a reading teacher and librarian.
novins@american.edu
Donna Gustafson Pavluk, Adjunct Professor, teaches EDU-644 Language Development and Remediation. She received her Master’s degree in speech-language Pathology from the University of Maryland, College Park. She has been a member of the speech and language department at The Lab School of Washington for fourteen years, where she evaluates and treats students with speech and language disorders, supervises clinical fellows and graduate students, and does advocacy work for children with learning disabilities. She also has a private speech-language pathology practice in Northern Virginia. In addition, she sings with the Washington Kantorei, and has ongoing involvement with orphan care in Rwanda.
pavluk@american.edu
Rose Marie Russo, Adjunct Professor, has been a teacher for 19 years. She is currently teaching junior high at The Lab School of Washington. She has experience teaching all subjects, and has taught math from first grade through high school Geometry. She also teaches undergraduate math classes and math methods classes at Catholic University. This is her second year teaching Theories, Methods, and Diagnosis in Remedial Math at AU. She coaches high school girls' volleyball and 7th and 8th grade girls' and boys' basketball.
rosemarie.russo@labschool.org
Ellie Zartman, Adjunct Professor, teaches EDU-545 Overview of All Exceptionalities: The Arts in Special Education. At the present time she is also the website coordinator for The Lab School of Washington and conducts storytelling projects in the Intermediate Program. Zartman has been employed at The Lab School for 20 years. The first ten years she taught creative writing to elementary and junior high school students using multimedia project based learning, and the next five years she was Director of Educational Technology. Zartman also supervises AU Master’s program student teachers in DC schools. Last year she tutored once a week in a 4th grade class at a DC public school and this year she is tutoring in a different DC public elementary school. She has an MA in Special Education: Learning Disabilities.
zartman@american.edu
