Rachel & Associates is a group of educators who provide consultation and training services in curriculum, instruction, and educational leadership. Our associates have extensive experience in early childhood, elementary, middle, and high school, college, and adult education. Our mission is to help organizations create literate environments Pre-K through 12. Using district and/or building data, we help educators match professional development goals to the needs of the students and staff. Our training sessions combine theory with practical application; participants are actively engaged through the use of exercises based on strategies taught in the sessions. Our presentation style is interactive, and session content is customized for the participants based on individual needs. Participants leave with a plan of action consisting of skills and strategies for immediate use.

Rachel & Associates provides training in three broad areas:

• Strategic reading in the content areas
• Strategies to engage the mind of the learner
• Capturing all of the reader through the reading assessment system
  
  

Rachel & Associates also supports districts in transferring skills from the workshop to the classroom. We provide follow-up consultative work to:

• Provide training for the building leadership team regarding ways to assist in the development of strategic readers.
• Develop literacy coaches who build and extend capacity within the organization.
• Provide facilitation and coaching skills for advanced implementation.
• Model strategic reading lessons.
• Design effective classroom instruction.

Rachel & Associates also presents at local and national conferences and offers the following keynotes or break-out sessions:

• The Leader's Role in Developing Strategic Readers
• Narrowing the Achievement Gap Through Vocabulary Development
• Reading Strategies for the Math, Science, or Social Studies Classroom
• Challenging High Performing or Advanced Readers

Dr. Rachel Billmeyer is an educational consultant who assists schools with strengthening their reading education programs with particular emphasis on reading in the content areas and improving reading assessment practices. Her first major publication in the field of reading was Teaching Reading in the Content Areas: If Not Me Then Who?, published by McRel (Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning) in 1996. The positive response to this book encouraged Dr. Billmeyer to elaborate on her work by writing a trilogy focusing on reading content, strategies, and reading assessment. Those publications are:

• Strategic Reading in the Content Areas: Practical Applications for Creating a Thinking Environment
• Strategies to Engage the Mind of the Learner: Building Strategic Learners, 2nd. edition
• Capturing All of the Reader Through the Reading Assessment System: Practical Applications for Guiding Strategic Readers, 2nd. edition

These three books—together called the Literacy and Learning Trilogy—encompass all three components of a comprehensive educational approach: curriculum, instruction, and assessment. Classroom teachers, school leaders, central office administrators, and university faculty can benefit from the series, which helps demystify the reading process, provides time- and teacher-tested strategies, and addresses how strategic reading "looks" at all levels and across curricula.

Teaching aids also are available to support the implementation of ideas presented in the Literacy and Learning Trilogy. Examples include:

• A blackline master CD-ROM available for each book for making student copies or overheads
• Colorful 20" x 24" wall charts that display content outlined in each book. For example, the Strategic Reader Wall Chart highlights the definition of a strategic reader.
• Questioning activities for each book. For example, Enlighten Your Thinking features questions about the sixteen Habits of Mind.

The books and all of their teaching aids are available at Rachel & Associates' online store on this Web site.