Last month, the school hosted a San Francisco Unified School District speaker who discussed methods to improve education. At the Jan. 7 seminar, Mike Schmoker, a former school administrator, offered his solutions to improving the current education system. Over 200 teachers from SFUSD attended the event at the Carol Channing Auditorium, according to assistant principal of administration Ellen Reller.

A doctor of education and speaker/consultant, Schmoker has written five books and a number of articles on improving education for various journals and newspapers. He came to San Francisco from his home in Arizona to showcase ideas from his latest book Focus: Elevating Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning, published in January.

Schmoker emphasized that in order to advance education, a school system must add a more coherent curriculum that guarantees student growth and supports authentic literacy through more reading and writing. According to Schmoker, increasing the amount of writing, especially non-fictional papers and analytical essays, results in stronger college-ready literacy in students.

Schmoker has held seminars for over a decade and consulted for various school districts across the nation. “In most schools and districts, there still is considerable room for improvement,” Schmoker said.

Many current curriculum objectives are vague and misunderstood, and must be clarified in order to lead to more efficient teaching methods, according to Schmoker. “We can’t just make a list and say that we’ll teach the students,” he said in his speech. “We have to keep track of what we can teach within several weeks, and make adjustments for a teaching plan that works.”

Schmoker also advocates simpler and more consistent methods to ensure a school has a cohesive curriculum. “By using reading and expository and persuasive writing across the disciplines and soundly structured lessons, we will improve our education system,” he said. His presentation labeled “Clear Learning Targets” and “Teacher Modeling for Students” as ways to create better education.

Alice Flores, an administrator for a teacher preparation program called CalStateTEACH, also attended the event. She agreed with Schmoker’s ideas for improving the education system. “I have been teaching since 1970,” she said. “Students have changed. The way we deliver education today has to change with them.”

To better reach the students, Flores emphasized the importance of integrating multimedia into the educational experience, through tools such as Khan Academy, an online collection of video lectures. “Right now I’m doing research in animation and how teachers can bring it into the classroom,” she said. “Khan Academy, for example, is extremely useful, because you get to watch lectures as many times as you need it, which is really helpful for the students that haven’t yet developed the essential skills for learning.”

Physiology teacher Shawn Laureyns, who began including Khan Academy materials last semester, finds video lectures a useful part of the learning experience. “I have students watch some lectures at home and take notes on them, which really opens up more time in class for more lab projects and activities,” he said. “Being able to watch the videos again and again allows students to become more involved in the subject and learn at their own pace.”

Through improving literacy curriculum at the practical level of lessons, Schmoker hopes to show educators simpler methods for stronger pedagogy in the classroom. “I hope to demystify school improvement by helping educators to focus — unwaveringly — on those elements that make the largest difference for student learning,” Schmoker said.

A version of this article first appeared in the Jan. 27, 2012 print edition of The Lowell.