Learn more about Rich Allen's PD offerings Richard Allen is an international consultant with more than 25 years experience coaching trainers and educators. Cofounder and president of Education Illustrated, he has taken the TrainSmart strategies beyond the United States and Canada to such diverse countries as the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Brunei, Russia, Jordan, and Brazil. Allen is also a popular keynote speaker at international conferences, and he facilitates moti-vational and teambuilding workshops. Allen started his educational career as a high school math and drama teacher. In 1985, he became a lead facilitator for SuperCamp-an accelerated learning program for teens-and has since worked with more than 25,000 students worldwide. He completed his doctorate in educational psychology at Arizona State University, where he studied how the human brain receives, processes, and recalls information-knowledge that informs all aspects of his training strategies. Willy Wood, MA in English, is a highly sought-after speaker on how the human brain learns and effective teaching practices. He speaks regularly in school districts across the United States and at national and international brain and education conferences, with a focus on sharing and modeling practical classroom approaches extrapolated from current cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Mr. Wood began his educational career as an English teacher, teaching high school and university level literature and writing classes for 14 years. He then served as the Communication Arts Consultant for the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for five years. During his time at DESE, Mr. Wood wrote the state's Curriculum Frameworks for Communication Arts, led the development of the state's communication arts assessment, and started the state's first intensive K-3 professional development model for improving reading instruction (the Missouri Reading Initiative). During his time as a teacher and state educational consultant, Mr. Wood became fascinated with exploring the biological underpinnings of effective teaching and learning. He left DESE in 2000 to become a full-time educational consultant and presenter so he could share his passion for brain-compatible teaching practices with educators around the world. He now serves as President of Open Mind Technologies, Inc., an educational consulting firm. The author lives in Missouri with his wife, Debbie, and has three sons. He can be reached at his email address:
[email protected].