Judith L. Fontana is the Mild Disabilities/Instructional Support Teams Coordinator at T/TAC. Judith's is known for her motto of "All children can learn. It is my responsibility as a teacher to discover how to help each child reach his/her potential." Judith has been a general educator, a reading specialist and a teacher of children with mild to moderate disabilities in self-contained and team classes. Instructional strategies for reading and content area learning for students with mild disabilities and ESOL students are a particular interest. Judith earned a BA in English from Niagara University in NY, a M.Ed. in Reading Education from the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY and a Ph.D. in Education from George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. In addition to extensive work in private and public school in several states and overseas with the Department of Defense Public Schools, Judith has worked as a consultant for an educational publishing company and as a volunteer coordinating a Reading Is Fundamental program for American elementary students in Okinawa, Japan. She has been a consultant for WETA's Reading Rockets website and has contributed to the LD Online website. She is currently working with the Instructional Support Teams project to support existing model schools and additional IST sites in T/TAC Region 4. Other projects include Enhanced Scope and Sequence Plus and the Strategic Instruction Model (SIM).

• Assessment practices
• Reading instruction including the ESOL population
• Teacher education

Virginia State Project

• Instructional Support Teams (IST)
• Strategic Instruction Model (SIM)

• Graduate School of Education
• Helen A. Kellar Institute for Human disAbilities
• Special Education
• Region 4 Training and Technical Assistance Center

• Internship in Special Education (EDSE - 790)

• Literacy in Content Areas (EDRD - 619)