Authors & Presenters

Maria Nielsen, educational speaker and author, specializes in supporting teachers and administrators in the areas of PLCs, RTI, school culture, curriculum design, the highly engaged classroom, and assessment systems. Her life’s work is to help schools build successful systems to ensure high levels of student learning.

Mark Onuscheck is director of curriculum, instruction, and assessment at Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Illinois. He is a former English teacher and director of communication arts.

Phillip Page, EdD, is superintendent of the Bartow County School System in Georgia. He is a former middle school and high school principal and assistant superintendent. Under his leadership, the school system was named a Model PLC District.

Anthony Reibel hails from Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Illinois and is the current assistant principal for teaching and learning. Anthony is also coauthor of several books: Proficiency-Based Assessment, Proficiency-Based Instruction, Proficiency-Based Grading in the Content Areas, and Pathways to Proficiency which explore the relationship between proficiency, pedagogy, and evidence-based grading.

Samuel Ritchie is a consultant with 35 years of experience as a practitioner. For most of those years, he was the director of technology at Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Illinois.

Sarah Schuhl specializes in professional learning communities, mathematics, assessment, school improvement, and RTI. She has been a secondary mathematics teacher, high school instructional coach, and K–12 mathematics specialist.

Jeanne Spiller is assistant superintendent for teaching and learning for Kildeer Countryside District 96 in Illinois. Her work focuses on implementation of the Common Core State Standards.

Eric Twadell, PhD, is superintendent of Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois. He has been a social studies teacher, curriculum director, and assistant superintendent for leadership and organizational development.