the Authors
LeAnn Nickelsen, EdM, is an educator, coach, author, and trainer. She presents nationally and internationally on topics such as closing the gaps in high-poverty schools through differentiation strategies and evidence-based researched strategies; balanced literacy strategies and processes; and enhancing engagement, memory, and transfer in learning environments. She is known for delivering a wealth of information in an active, fun format with very specific, practical classroom examples. Participants leave with many ideas for maximizing learning for all students.
LeAnn believes that training is not enough for teachers to implement high effect size tools and strategies. Coaching is needed to bring full transfer from trainings, and she works with teachers one-to-one and in small groups to help them achieve their educational goals. She is a parent of college-age twins and applies the research to the hardest jobs out there—parenting and teaching.
LeAnn earned a master’s degree in educational administration from the University of North Texas.
To learn more about LeAnn’s work, visit Maximize Learning (www.maximizelearninginc.com) or follow @lnickelsen1 on Twitter.
Melissa Dickson, EdM, is an outstanding presenter and educator. She is passionate about providing teachers with research-based ideas and strategies that they implement immediately. In her decades as an educator, Melissa has been a literacy coach, staff developer, site-based team leader, mentor teacher, inclusion teacher, classroom teacher, and early childhood teacher. She supports a balanced literacy classroom model. Melissa presents internationally at conferences and seminars and provides custom training for schools and districts. Her ability to provide relevant information with humor and enthusiasm makes her a very popular presenter. Participants leave her sessions with a wealth of ideas to immediately implement in their classrooms.
She has a bachelor’s degree in education and a master’s degree in reading from Sam Houston State University.
To learn more about Melissa’s work, follow @mdickson221 on Twitter.
To book LeAnn Nickelsen and Melissa Dickson for professional development, contact [email protected].
Foreword
by Rick Wormeli
In the 2000 film Billy Elliott, starring Jamie Bell and Julie Walters, eleven-year-old Billy has had a rough time auditioning for the Royal Ballet Theater, and an even more difficult time getting his family to support his dream to be a dancer. After receiving skeptical views of his rebellious dance audition and a scolding for punching another boy auditioning for the same slot in the ballet company, Billy is sure he’s failed and makes his way to the door. The judges stop him, however, and ask, “What does it feel like when you’re dancing?” The camera closes in and Billy responds with raw honesty:
Don’t know. Sorta feels good. Sorta stiff and that, but once I get going … then I like, forget everything. And sorta disappear. Sorta disappear. Like I feel a change in my whole body. And I’ve got this fire in my body. I’m just there. Flyin’ like a bird. Like electricity. Yeah, like electricity.
Billy’s epiphany conveys the same emancipation as psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s (2008) flow and so beautifully expressed in “High Flight,” the classic poem by John Gillespie Magee Jr. (, an American pilot serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II. Remember those lines from the poem: “Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings,” and later, “High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there…” To shed one’s affectations and displace worldly angst while lost in the music and dancing is a cathartic moment of self-discovery; we come alive. In that electric moment, we experience robust belonging, daring hope, and real liberation. And to do this with a dance partner or team moving with you in synchronicity? We slip the surly bonds and become more than we were; we flourish.
Notice, though, that Billy’s soaring dance and Magee’s hov’ring are both grounded in the physics of their realities. Neither is supernatural, but what they achieve is in direct response to their grounded realities turned powerful trebuchets. Billy dances with swinging arms and high-stepping cadence along the narrow rims of brick walls. He slams his body against encroaching walls to the beat of a primal rhythm only he can hear, practically leaping out of his skin, purging pent-up anger and catalyzing joy. He is released, just as Magee feels, emancipated from gravity, but deeply influenced by reality and fundamentals.
And so, we dance; music please … hear it? Now, we go: walk forward, back, forward, back, sidestep together, sidestep together—other direction now—sidestep together, sidestep together, rock step, rock step … and, one, two, cha-cha-cha! We’re off!
In their book, Teaching With the Instructional Cha-Chas: Four Steps to Make Learning Stick, highly accomplished educators (our dance instructors) LeAnn Nickelsen and Melissa Dickson show us how to push one foot into new territory then bring the other foot to join the journey, all in a coordinated effort to maximize student learning. Notice how grounded they are in classroom reality and instructional truths at every turn, however. Who knew those elements could help us soar like this? One, two, cha-cha-cha—and cha! Twice the fiery, two-step pasodoble, this is a four-step dance done in a teacher’s favorite style—practical. It’s the baile práctico de cuatro pasos: chunk, chew, check, and change!
In our first foray to the dance floor as we read, several factors become apparent. First, LeAnn and Melissa know their neuroscience and the practical applications thereof. In fact, they are among the most studied educators I know, and even better, they are gifted communicators who make the latest in what we know about learning and the brain actionable—not in some fake, school-catalog-perfect classroom, but in classrooms that reflect our diverse realities and challenges. True to their professionalism, they reference recent and time-tested research, revisiting many of our education research heroes, and providing multiple references for follow-up study. It’s hard to be both scholarly and practical, vetting the research and activating teacher creativity, but wow—they do it well.
Second, LeAnn and Melissa are not just in favor of students owning their learning and acting on it, but also for teacher self-efficacy. A clear theme in these pages is that gradual release of responsibility for students, which Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey (2015) promote, and also for teachers to run with as well. There’s no sense in being beholden to the mere descriptions in this book simply because they are printed here. They intone, So use these tools and make them your own! Thankfully, we’re granted behind-the-scenes intimacy with lesson planning—serious, warts and all, truly reflecting a teacher’s daily experiences—something other professional books mistakenly avoid. The authors are immediately inspiring, yes, but they provide teachers with specific tools to augment, revise, and differentiate each strategy to reflect their own style and students’ challenges, cultivating instructional dexterity. With these tools we are responsive to current needs and versatile with those down the road. And particularly appropriate here: there’s not one foo-foo-fluff activity in the group. All strategies included herein are substantive, resulting in real learning. Any National Board Certified teacher reflecting highly accomplished practice would be proud to use these ideas.
And good golly, let’s
