William N. Bender, Ph D, has had a long and distinguished career in education, teaching in public school for several years and in higher education for some 26 years at Bluefield State College in West Virginia, Rutgers University in New Jersey, and the University of Georgia. He has written 36 books in special and general education. With his retirement, he has stepped back from his rigorous workshop schedule, which as recently as 2016 included some 40 workshop days per year. While the COVID-19 pandemic impacted his work, he has written four historical fiction novels and several educational books in recent years. He has delivered several professional development projects, including most recently a keynote for a virtual conference on project-based learning in Brazil in conjunction with his Corwin book
Project-Based Learning (2012).
Learn more about William Bender's PD offeringsConsulting Description: Differentiated InstructionConsulting Description: MathConsulting Description: Project-Based LearningConsulting Description: RTIConsulting Description: Technology
Laura Waller, MS/MA, is a former elementary school teacher, an author, a National Certified Counselor, and a Licensed Professional Counselor. She holds a master’s degree in elementary education from Johns Hopkins University and a second master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling from Capella University. Waller is also an ADHD-Certified Clinical Services Provider. She entered the counseling field after a number of years as a teacher in elementary classrooms in North Carolina and Washington, DC. This classroom background yields a unique developmental perspective when Waller is working therapeutically with children, teens, and their families. She currently provides individual and family therapy for clients in the Northern Virginia (NOVA) area ranging in age from 8 to 601. She also hosts monthly seminars and groups aimed at supporting parents with a particular focus on raising neurodivergent children. Waller has led numerous workshops for churches and schools in the NOVA area with a specific focus on communication between teens and parents as well as using emotional support animals in a therapeutic setting.
Waller is active in several professional associations, including the American Counseling Association (ACA) and Northern Virginia Licensed Professional Counselors (NVLPC). She has coauthored three books in education, most recently RTI and Differentiated Reading in the K–8 Classroom by Solution Tree Press (2011).
