Leisa Morton-Standish, PhD

Director of Elementary Education

Dr. Leisa Morton-Standish is the Director of Elementary Education at the North American Division.

She has taught in small rural schools as well as in large urban schools. She has taught on the east and west coasts of the U.S, both in and out of the Adventist education system, and overseas. She has also spent a considerable part of her career teaching at universities, including the University of Maryland, Washington Adventist University and Macquarie University.

Leisa holds a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Maryland, an MA in Education from California State University and a Diploma in Education from Avondale College.

Leisa is committed to Christ and the ideals of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Her first love is the classroom where she can share her passion for learning and her love for Jesus.

s a newly minted teacher in the early 1990’s I arrived in my classroom with six file folder boxes for each of my subject areas as well as folders full of pacing guides and unit plans for the year. I would comb through these boxes for resources and photocopy more as I came across great ideas for my students.

Fast forward to 2022 and we have a plethora of resources at our fingertips. We can find multimedia resources, visual literacy, songs, online interactive quizzes, project and problem-based learning units, rich task assessments and so much more. What value can we add from the NAD? We can provide distinctly Adventist, faith-based learning resources.

 The NAD Office of Education in cooperation with the Adventist Learning Community are pleased to announce a new interactive digital database for teachers K-12 that is a one-stop shop for Standards-based Learning (SBL) resources.

 As teachers are working in professional learning communities, complete the required training for SBL, have a supportive collaborative culture in their schools, and have a system for highly effective teaching, they will be given a login from their conference to access the resources including:

• K-12 Proficiency scales and student-friendly “I can” statements

• Prioritized standards in the four core subject areas ELA, Math, Social Studies, and Science
• Yearlong plans
• Vocabulary alignment
• Unit plans
• Resources
• SBL Training
• Aligned faith-based resources (searchable from the CIRCLE database)