I am a teacher and a researcher. I started teaching when I was in high school—and I still seek out opportunities to teach. Mostly, I taught middle school. I am passionate about making content meaningful and assessments more educative. After teaching in the classroom, I spent five years working as an administrator because I became passionate about creating school cultures where teachers learn from and challenge each other thereby making school an intellectually stimulating place for everyone. The few summers I spent teaching educators at Project Zero profoundly shaped my thinking about how to teach for deep understanding. After 15 years working inside of schools, I returned to graduate school to study how schools and school systems, especially those attended by our most vulnerable students, could become replete with meaningful learning.
I received my Ph.D. in Curriculum and Teaching from Stanford University, M.Ed. from Harvard University, and my B.A. from Dartmouth College.
I am at SCOPE to lead change and to study school reform. I care deeply about how we construct learning experiences. I want more students, teachers, and administrators to become inspired and emboldened to create meaningful, memorable, and ambitious learning opportunities for others. I am at SCOPE because we develop lasting partnerships with teachers, administrators, and researchers; our relationships evolve, deepen, and are mutually influencing. I believe our work provokes changes in schools and school systems that make a difference for students. At SCOPE, I am able to pursue my passion for learning about and helping to create the conditions that motivate and enable others to pursue their own ambitious learning and to strive for a more equitable and just society.
- My first book: How to Create the Conditions for Learning: Continuous Improvement in Classrooms, Schools and Districts
- Turning Around Schools: The National Board Certification Process as a School Improvement Strategy
- Co-creator of the Instructional Leadership Corps
- A series on Professional Learning for Linked Learning
- An argument for the “Changing the Relationship between Professional Development Policy and the Practitioner’s Role” in Handbook of Professional Development Education
