Professional Development

Working side-by-side with your staff and students to ensure their success with our assistive technology

Why We're Different

Be honest, how many times have you purchased technology only to discover: you buy, they fly? Not us. We’re going to stick around until your teachers and students are seeing the outcomes that drove you to purchase our solutions in the first place! We can assist you in creating implementation and professional development plans that can be carried out in one school or across an entire district.

Individual Options

School Districts come in many shapes and sizes and so do our offerings. Our flexible on-site trainings pair some of the industry’s top consultants with your school or district’s initiatives. If you have the personnel and expertise to carry out your own trainings, no problem. We can provide you with all the materials you need to be successful. And guess what—many of our professional development resources are completely FREE!

Female teacher in blue instructing two students

Flexible Options

Don Johnston’s experienced facilitators understand how students AND adults learn best. In times when hiring substitutes is NOT an option, or having the luxury of setting aside an entire day for training is out of the question, we have some flexible ways to train your staff on these top-selling literacy tools.

Woman in white button up writing on a large white board

Workshop Sessions

We provide on-site workshop sessions for our top literacy tools Snap&Read, Co:Writer, uPAR, Readtopia, First Author.   Give us a Call Today: 800-999-4660

Man in blue shirt standing in front of a room full of computers with people working on them

Continuing Education Credits

Participants attending Don Johnston Professional Development seminars, workshops, conferences, and in-service training can earn state-approved continuing education credits, or their equivalents, in states where programs are established.

Woman in white button up shirt standing in front of a chalk board with a city drawn on it

What Training Attendees are Saying

“It’s not very often that I leave a training already with ideas about HOW to implement what I learned into what I am already doing. Thank you!”

“In a world where time is so precious, professional development is usually dreaded — today’s presentation was FANTASTIC! We walked away with valuable, usable information that we can implement immediately in our classrooms! Thank you!”

“I thought this would not be a worthy reason to miss classroom time, but it was very helpful and I look forward to working with these programs in the future.”

“The trainer was fantastic and had a lot of really great (realistic) tips and tricks for us!”

Professional Development Pricing

Ready to get started? Give us a call 800-999-4660.

Free Consultation

First Consultation

$Free/

(no credit card required)
Get Started

Our Approaches

Classroom Coaching

Our facilitator co-teaches in the teacher’s own classroom, modeling the practice of technology for instruction while also using the teacher’s planned curriculum.

Student Coaching

Students and teachers sit side-by-side in your computer lab during their typical reading/writing period while our facilitator leads the training in the context of authentic, age-appropriate literacy lessons. Several classes rotate in and out over the course of the day.

Traditional Staff Training

The goal is to move away from the old “expert model” where only a few people are proficient users and teachers of AT. The train-the-trainer model is your best option for building capacity. You’ll receive tons of materials and resources that will help you keep the momentum going long after we leave!We offer two types of traditional staff training:

  1. Rotating Staff – Two to four groups rotate in and out; the content stays the same.
  2. Full Day – The same group stays all day learning a broader set of content.

Virtual Coaching (First Author Only)

Our facilitators support teachers through two webinars and several phone meetings with an aim to see writing outcomes from students in 30 days by focusing on implementation and building teacher confidence!

Resources & Support

The first step to success is installation. Making sure your software has been installed, is working properly and is widely available for teacher and student use is as important to us as it is to you.

Product Resources Technical Support Software Requirements