Current Projects:

• Featured educational consultant and keynote speaker, New Horizons In Education Jo works with teachers, school district administrators, parents, school board members, and policy makers in the areas of second language acquisition, biliteracy, brain-based education, Multiple Intelligences Theory and Application, differentiated instruction, community building, program design and evaluation, and environmental psychology. Seminars, retreats and keynotes have been conducted throughout the United States, Canada, Argentina, and Brazil, and Japan.
• Lecturer, California State University Sacramento,Teacher Education Department. Jo teaches Language and Literacy courses to student teachers. Other courses taught include Bilingual Literacy, Bilingual Education Methodology, and a Seminar titled: Advanced Curriculum Development for Administrators.
• Advisory Board Member/Instructor at the Multiple Intelligence Institute at the University of California, Riverside.
• Senior Advisory Member for Susan Kovalik and Associates.
• Author,“ACCESS: Building Literacy Through Learning program,” Great Source Education Group. An innovative, standards-based series of content area programs to help English Language Learners build language and learning skills in all content-areas, and also the “ACCESS for Newcomers program,” for new arrival students.
• Author, Scholastic, Inc. Publishers: “Read 180: Strategies for English Language Learners.”
• Speaker, Bureau of Education and Research, a speakers’ bureau providing superb staff development and training resources for educators in North America and Canada. Current seminars include: “Practical Strategies for Accelerating the Literacy Skills and Content Learning of Your ESL Students” and “Accelerating Your ESL Students’ Reading Comprehension, Vocabulary Development and Reading Fluency.”
• Author and Featured video presenter, National Professional Resources (NPR), an educational resource company that produces and distributes its own videos focusing on current educational issues. Jo’s current videos include: “Differentiated Instruction and the Second Language Learner,” and “Multiple Intelligences and the Second Language Learner.” Jo was also featured in Dr. Howard Gardner’s ”Optimizing Intelligences: Thinking, Emotion & Creativity,” and Dr. Thomas Armstrong’s,“Multiple Intelligences: Discovering the Giftedness in All.”
• Featured presenter with Dr. Carlos Cortes, Dr. Sue Teele, and Dr. Robert Hanson in Lee Canter and Associates video series, “Diversity In Student Learning.”

• ELEMENTARY STUDY GROUP MEMBER (1985 - 1986)
• Appointed by President Ronald Reagan and Secretary of Education William Bennett to be the only teacher representative on a 21 member Elementary School Study Group Commission. The committee was responsible for identifying problems and in elementary education, offering solutions, and advising the Secretary on possible topics which were then presented in the U.S. Department of Education’s report titled, “First Lessons: A Report on Elementary Education.”
• FEATURED IN AN NBC FIVE-PART TELEVISION SERIES TITLED “THE NEW KIDS IN TOWN” (2/86)
  The series focused on the effectiveness of Sacramento City Unified’s Newcomer School. Part of the series focused on Jo’s brain-based education program she developed for her 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade non-English speaking refugee and immigrant status students. The series was shown on NBC’s Channel 3 and has been featured on 256 NBC affiliates throughout the United States.
• INVITED TO THE WHITE HOUSE BY PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN (3/86)
  Invited to the White House for the presentation of the U.S. Department of Education’s “What Works” report co-written by the Elementary Study Group
• OUTSTANDING EDUCATOR (10/85)
  Awarded by the National School Board Association.
  San Francisco, California