Regional Director, National Urban Alliance for Effective Education
La Verne Flowers is the director of the West Metro Education Program/National Urban Alliance for Effective Education (WMEP/NUA) Partnership. Her leadership skills and passion for change has led to K-12 teachers, principals, and superintendents from 10 school districts and 55 schools receiving professional development services in pedagogy to foster high intellectual performances in students and teachers. The WMEP/NUA partnership, which is entering into the ninth year, supports the voluntary integration collaborative between Minneapolis and the surrounding suburban Minnesota school districts. Under her leadership with an emphasis on transformation sustainability, a cadre of teacher leaders have been trained and endorsed to serve as local coaches to sustain the work of NUA.
As a regional director Dr. Flowers also served as the symposium leader for the SF/NUA Principals during the partnership. Participating principals were guided in the basic elements of instructional leadership, the foundational principles and practices of NUA, the Pedagogy of Confidence®, and Mediative Learning Community™. They engaged in collecting data as empirical research using the Mediative Analysis Process™.
Prior to joining NUA, her fifteen years as a teacher from grades 3-8 served as a catalyst in her becoming a “change agent.” Her expertise in professional development in New York City as a citywide coordinator for the Gifted and Talented Unit led to creating multi-tiered professional development seminars for middle school teachers. She spearheaded the first NYC Initiative to acquaint educators with the basic tenets of the Middle School concept in over 200 middle-level schools. She had the good fortune to serve as the principal of the nationally recognized Louis Armstrong Middle School, a magnet school based on integration serving the multi-ethnic borough of Queens, New York. In addition she was able to take theory into practice as the Locust Valley Middle school principal when she worked with her colleagues to create a middle school culture within a campus shared with the high school.
Dr. Flowers has earned a B.S. from Hampton University; MA degree from Teachers College, Columbia University; MS from City College of New York; and Ed.D. from Fordham University. Her doctoral studies in Administration and Supervision focused on the problems and perspectives of change in implementing the middle school concept. Some of her professional activities include: member of the steering committee for the National Adolescent Literacy Coalition (and liaison for NUA), former member of the Board of Directors for the NYS Middle School Association, member of the National School Reform Faculty, and a Tri-State Consortium evaluator for Regents Accreditation for Teacher Education Programs (RATE).
Dr. Flowers started working for NUA in 2003 and has found those experiences to have been the most profound of her entire career. She has been surrounded by numerous educators who are passionate about learning and who will leave no stone unturned until the mission of high intellectual performance is achieved for the students and educators within their care.
