Experts

Bob Jervis currently teaches the social studies methods courses in the Master of Arts Program at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland. He is the former Coordinator of Social Studies, K-12, for the Anne Arundel County, Maryland Public Schools and has worked extensively with the Maryland State Department of Education to develop the social studies component of the Maryland State Performance Assessment Program. He has also worked in the Division for Leadership Development at the Maryland State Department of Education, working with principals of low performing schools to improve student achievement. He continues his work as a national consultant, working with schools systems and other agencies to develop units which demonstrate the link between instruction and assessment. He has served as a consultant to the Delaware Department of Education; the Los Angeles Unified School District; the Colonial School District in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania; and the Council of Chief State Schools Officers in Washington, DC. 

Bob has extensive experience in staff development having done numerous workshops in career education, social studies, service learning, and performance-based instruction and assessment throughout the district, state and nation.  He has worked as a partner in ASCI, a consulting group, initiated by Jay McTighe. In this position, he has designed a unit planning format, which includes the best elements of Understanding by Design and has adapted this process to the social studies classroom. He has worked with schools in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Virginia to further refine the model. He has presented at state and national conferences, including The National Council of Social Studies, The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, The Education Trust Conference, the International Reading Conference, and the National ASCD Conference on Assessment in Nashville, Tennessee. Nationally, he has participated on a number of committees and task forces including the ASCD Global Education Task Force, the Social Studies Committee for the NSSE Indicators of School Quality, and The National Career Education Task Force.

Bob received his undergraduate and masters degrees from The Pennsylvania State University. He has completed course work toward his doctoral degree at The University of Maryland.  In addition, he has done post graduate work at Loyola College in Baltimore, and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Bob also experience as a public school classroom teacher, supervisor, and administrator.

Dr. Toni Fuss Kirkwood-Tucker, Social Science Education Professor and Program Coordinator at Florida State University, is German-American. She worked for almost twenty years in the Miami Public School District in the capacities of high school world history teacher, social studies coordinator, and director of the International Global/Education Program, implementing global education programs in schools, the Model United Nations, the U.S-Russian Student Exchange Program and Hunger Project, and establishing Sister Cities.

After receiving her doctorate from Florida International Education, she joined the College of Education faculty at Florida Atlantic University, teaching courses in social studies methods, global perspectives, and international education. She has received two Fulbright Scholar Awards to the People’s Republic of China and The Russia Federation and was invited by the Russian Ministry of Education to participate in its education reform movement. Dr. Kirkwood-Tucker visited and studied in Japan, Vietnam, and South Africa and was elected President of the International Assembly of the National Council for the Social Studies.

A global scholar, she authored numerous publications in national and international professional journals and has recently joined the adjunct faculty at Florida A&M University and Florida State University in Tallahassee. Her bicultural and bilingual German background will contribute significantly to the purpose and goals of the Goethe-Institut in its efforts to promote cross-cultural understanding between the American and German people.

Constance “Connie” Manter is an educational consultant whose background includes a variety of experiences. As the Social Studies State Specialist for Maine from 1989 to 2004, she coordinated programs and provided professional development for curriculum, instruction and assessment. As an agent for educational change, she consulted with the Center for Educational Transformation to implement the principles and practices set forth in “Promising Futures” for secondary schools in Maine and various other states.

As the Co-Coordinator of Maine Geographic Alliance, she organized and led Summer Academies and facilitated numerous professional development opportunities. Collaborating with the Council for Chief State School Officers, she provided leadership and professional development services for The Comprehensive Social Studies Assessment Project for 25 states. With a keen interest in international education, she consulted with the International Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development on the Global Education Project.

Currently, she has established Manter Educational Services, Inc. and facilitates professional development including “Designing for Understanding: Creating Units for Learning with Performance Assessments Based on State’s Content Standards” for local, state, national systems and organizations.

Michael Nentwich was born in Prague and went to schools in Austria, England, and West Germany. He studied economics, English and American language and literature, geography, and political science at the Universities of Nuremberg and Heidelberg, and has a Ph.D. in English literature from Heidelberg University.

Nentwich taught German and English at St. Olave's Grammar School in London, at Mannheim University, at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and at the Technical University of Berlin, before joining the Goethe-Institut in 1982. He worked at the Goethe-Institut locationss in Bremen, Madrid, Düsseldorf, São Paulo, Munich, and New York, before becoming director of the Goethe-Institut Atlanta in 2000. Nentwich was the executive director of the Goethe-Institut Social Studies Project (now the Transatlantic Outreach Program) from 1994 until October 2006.

Kim O'Neil has taught at the elementary and middle school levels and is currently teaching at Liverpool Elementary School in Liverpool, New York. She is an officer of the New York State Social Studies Council, the teacher liaison for the Center of European Studies at Syracuse University, and a book review committee member for the Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People sponsored by the National Council for the Social Studies in cooperation with the Children’s Book Council. She is also a 2003 TOP Fellow and a 2005 Salzburg Seminar Fellow.

Kim is a frequent workshop presenter at local, state, and national conventions and a many time grant recipient, the most recent being a 2005 CiviConnection Grant sponsored by the NCSS. She has been an educational consultant for Colonial Williamsburg and school publishing companies as well as an assessment writer for the New York State Social Studies Education Department. Kim earned a B.A. from SUNY Potsdam, an M.L.S. from Syracuse University, and a C.A.S. from SUNY Oswego.

Joann Prewitt is a native Mississippian who loves to teach, to learn, and to travel abroad.  Her educational background includes graduate degrees in European history, American history, and economics from Delta State University and Hunter College of the City University of New York with continuing studies at the University of Virginia and Johns Hopkins University. 

She is currently the Education Associate for Social Studies Assessment at the Delaware Department of Education where she leads the development of a state assessment in the social studies content areas of civics, economics, geography, and history in four grades.  Prior to her work in Delaware, she served as the Coordinator for K – 12 Social Studies at the Mississippi Department of Education and then at the Maryland Department of Education. She has also taught history, economics, and government in middle and high school classrooms.

Her work includes being the co-author of the 2007 editions of Germany in Europe and Germany Today and the author of articles for Grant Wiggins’ Big Ideas and the Smithsonian Institution’s Smithsonian in Your Classroom.  She is also a national consultant to several educational organizations, such as the Council of Chief State School Officers, and to school districts across the United States on best practices for instruction, alignment, backward design, assessment for learning, and scaffolding for higher order thinking.