Don Lourcey Email & Phone Number

Statesville, North Carolina, United States

Statesville, North Carolina

Raleigh, North Carolina

Responsible for organizing, implementing, managing, and evaluating the North Carolina Vendor Course Approval Process, pursuant to the North Carolina General Assembly legislation that all K-12 e-learning courses be approved North Carolina Virtual Public School. My duties include arranging two contracted reviewers per review, collecting and organizing vendor submitted course and teacher quality documentation, notifying all vendors of approval status, and arranging reviewers for courses that do not meet approval standards after first review. In addition, I work closely with NCVPS’s office manager to submit reviewers for contracted services and manage a budget of $35,000 per year. On average, NCVPS reviews 299 courses from 3rd party vendors each year.

Statesville, North Carolina

Manages and evaluates the development and implementation of all professional learning (PL) experiences for all 735 teachers, 24 internal staff, and the myriad of school-level stakeholders of North Carolina Virtual Public School. Under my leadership, our PL team has developed, implemented, and evaluation NCVPS’s Teacher in Training & Practicum (TnT) program, for new and potential teachers. The TnT program is a 16-week program. The first 8 weeks for the TnT includes course work while the second 8 weeks includes the Practicum built for the TnT to experience a live course, with live students, similar to a student-teaching experience. In addition, my team and I have developed 10-30 hour professional learning courses covering topics such as shattering the myths of online and blended learning, copyright and fair use (a course approved by Quality Matters), assessment and feedback, individualize learning, teaching in Canvas as well as Just in time projects called Take 5, a video series produced bi-monthly covering specific topics: Technology, Pedagogy, and Content Knowledge (TPACK) and Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition (SAMR) models and approaches, tone in communication and feedback, proper use of digital content, and many others. Tightly connected to my work as professional learning director in general and developing and growing our teachers as leaders and learners is the Coaches Corner, a virtual space where NCVPS Instructional Leaders can model coaching practices and engage in discussions around research, crucial conversations, job-embedded coaching best practices. Finally, another area under my leadership includes NCVPS’s Leaders of Excellent in the Advancement of Digital Education (LEAD Ed). This initiative spanned the state of North Carolina offering teachers and administrators access to high quality professional learning aligned to Quality Matters and International Association for K-12 Online Learning standards for quality online courses.

Work with school and district leadership teams to take the virtual advantage with NCVPS, developing processes to integrate e-learning within current school and district improvement plans, creating robust school support plans and strategies to engage leaders in 21st century leadership and learning, building leadership capacity to navigate social media and other Web 2.0 Tools in order to model and lead by example, and coordinating Race to the Top Blended STEM Initiative for two RttT project districts.

Designed, developed, and trained NBPTS initiatives: Candidate Support Provider, Take One, Building Accomplished Teaching Program. As a member of the NBPTS faculty for Candidate Support Providers, I helped design, revise, maintain and deliver the Candidate Support Provider (CSP) curriculum. The focus of this training is to provide CSPs with what matters most to candidates, giving them a foundation of candidate support: understanding levels of accomplishment, examining adult learning theory and practice, the scoring process, recognizing biases, working with and implementing the ethical standards of the process, and equipping CSPs with the skills to help work with and communicate with candidates as they read entries. Trained and facilitated this curriculum (plus entry review training) to teachers/candidate support providers all around the country. Conducted a train-the-trainer model to equip the faculty to train and coach the new curriculum, rolling out October, 2008. Also, I participated as team member to train and facilitate the online content through Moodle for CSPs all across the country.

Worked to implement a continuous improvement model at the school and classroom level following the PDSA (Plan, Do, Study, Act) approach, established professional learning community structures, provided professional develop on instructional best practices, created strategies to deep dive with data and let that data drive instruction.

English 1 (9th), English III (11th), AP Literature and Composition

Southview High School: English 2 (10th), English 3 (11th), AP Language (11th), AP Literature (12th)Cape Fear High School: English 3, AP Language, AP Literature, Yearbook, Journalism

Principal'S Add-On License, Principal License Add-On

Maed, English Education

Bachelor Of Arts, English