July 27, 2008
Janis Watson
Curriculum Developer and Standards Correlator
Agency for Instructional Technology
Janis Watson is a curriculum writer and curriculum standards specialist for AIT. She has twenty years’ experience working on content and curriculum in the public schools, including the fields of language arts, mathematics, learning disabilities, at-risk education, and general elementary content. She holds a bachelor’s degree in elementary education, a master’s degree in special education, and another twenty graduate hours in at-risk education. Ms. Watson has extensive experience in correlating content to state curriculum standards.
In addition to her classroom experience as a teacher, Ms. Watson helped to design, implement, and administer grants for an innovative, intensive summer school known as TRAVELS (based on cultural immersion), worked at the state level in evaluating student essays in the written portion of Indiana’s ISTEP assessment test, and chaired the local curriculum committee for the state’s Performance-Based Assessment (PBA).
Since joining AIT, Ms. Watson has designed an intensive remedial reading program for grades K–3, has served as a project manager and educational consultant for AIT’s online curricula, and has been a content consultant to Destiny Images, Inc. for the popular instructional television series Letter TV (II and III), a phonemic awareness series, which has earned recognition by the U.S. Department of Education. Watson also serves as a curriculum consultant for current AIT projects and writes teacher guides for acquired products. She created an online teaching guide for the classroom version of the revolutionary PBS series The Shape of Life. Most recently, she is writing the guide for the landmark U.S. history series America in the 20th Century.