Norma Kay Dively

State: Pennsylvania

Year I Started with PLS: 2007

Education:

• 1969 – Harrisburg Area Community College –Associates degree
• 1971 – Shippensburg University – BS in Language Arts and Library Science
• 1991 – Shippensburg University – Masters Degree in Library Science

Why I love teaching PLS courses:
I have always been a teacher in some capacity or other beginning as a teacher of middle school Language Arts to professional development on the state level. Facilitating on-line courses has become a passion of mine due to the flexibility it affords me to work with teachers in large groups during the day and on an individual basis in the evening. Working with a variety of teachers and learning from their experiences in the on-line format is a dimension that one cannot get when training from the front of the room in a synchronous class setting.

PLS Courses I Teach:

• Reading to Learn: Comprehension Instruction™
• I have presented workshops at the district and state levels on: Assessment, Big Ideas in Math, Team Building, Dispute Resolution, IDEA revisions, Special Education for the General Education Teacher, School-wide Effective Behavior, the Use of Graphic Organizers, and Foundations for Effective Mathematics Instruction.

Teaching Experience:
My public school classroom teaching experience consists of three years of Language Arts at the junior high school level. After that I became an educational consultant providing professional development at the direction of the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

What I enjoy most about teaching:
The most rewarding aspect of teaching for me is when a teacher reports that something we did in a workshop helped a student to be more successful in the classroom. When teachers get excited about something I was able to help them accomplish brings a great feeling of satisfaction.

Favorite moment in teaching:
One of the highlights of teaching students in the public school was when we had cooperative groups learning and then teaching the information to the rest of the group in a jig saw activity. The student that the one group chose to deliver the information to the whole class was not a very outgoing young man. With some coaxing he agreed to be the spokesman. He did a wonderful job due to their coaching. After delivering the lesson he began to emerge as an individual, gained friends and was more included in the class by his peers. The lesson we all learned that day wasn’t about Shakespeare, it was about including others and being better people.

Personal Information:
When I have some free time I enjoy sewing, reading, and training my dog, Cody. Cody has passed his requirements and is registered as a therapy dog, so we go visit a nearby senior center and the one local hospital. My husband is retired and I am in the “red” zone (within the 1-5 year range) as they say, so we are looking forward to doing more travelling when I do actually retire. We have one grandson who we enjoy visiting although he is four hours away and we only get to see him once a month.