SPEAKING

For me, speaking is not just an extension of my teaching, it is teaching. Using the stories of my classroom experience, the insights of a reflective practice and the research accumulated as a constantly curious educator, I weave key learnings together for audiences in very accessible ways. Whether it’s the 30,000 foot view, or the one from on-the-ground, I work to lessen the gap between the two in order to give way to clearer vision and actionable next steps.

 

In nearly 200 keynote speaking occasions, I have accumulated a broad range of experiences to a wide variety of audiences. From the White House to rural Iowa, from commencement addresses to policy forums, from teacher educators to elementary students, I have enjoyed and learned from every opportunity. While I tailor each talk for the audience, these are some especially popular titles and topics.

Selected Titles

  • Riding Mistakes Out of Mediocrity: How We Must Re-Think Getting Better
  • Are We Asking the Right Questions? Creating Cultures of Learning
  • The Let-Go That Gets More: Shifting Learning Agency
  • The Perfect Mess: Finding Our Best Teaching Selves
  • Writing the Poetry of Our Profession

Selected Topics

  • Creating classroom cultures of learning
  • Common Core implementation
  • Teacher leadership
  • Productive failure
  • Creating thinkers; teaching analysis
  • Learning related to literacy
  • Instructional coaching and administrators as instructional leaders
If you have a topic in mind that you don’t see here, don’t hesitate to ask. There’s a good chance I’ve intersected with it at some point!

TEACHING

I am a teacher. Above all else. I see classrooms wherever I go. Some of them are familiar, like room 506 that I walk through in the morning. Other times, my classrooms are convention centers or school gymnasiums. Sometimes I find myself in small-town media centers or classrooms in other countries. I’ve worked with and learned from teachers in all content areas and grade levels, from pre-K to university professors. Regardless of the venue or size, whether my learners are veteran educators or brand-new to the profession, my workshops are designed to be learning experiences.

 

In order to meet the needs of each school or organization, I will plan ahead with you to insure the learning design meets your needs. I offer workshops in the form of breakout sessions, half-day, full-day or multi-day experiences.

Selected Titles

  • Creativity Through Constraint: Creating Projects that Enliven
  • Focus on Writing: It’s All Recursive
  • Learning to Think: Empowering Students to Become Learners
  • Unpacking Layers: Teaching Analysis and the Whole Class Novel
  • Frame by Frame: Turning Mistakes into Teacher-able Moments
  • Pathways to Careful Reading: Getting Clear on Close-Reading and Text-Dependent Questions
  • Teaching, Leading, Learning: Empowering Teacher Leaders

Selected Topics

  • Using video to become a more reflective practitioner
  • Finding and capitalizing on learning moments as part of observation
  • Project-based learning
  • Common Core
  • Empowering teacher leaders
  • Teaching analysis
  • Enhancing student engagement through constraint
  • Instructional coaching and administrators as instructional leaders
Teacher-in-Action Experience

I have also started to offer a unique experience that offers teachers a special insight into the implicit cognitive work teachers do. After presenting a lesson plan to a group of teacher-learners, I teach a class(es) of their students in their school. During this time, teachers collect important evidence of learning moments. We then use this lesson and their observations as the foundation for our continued learning. What has become most valuable about this approach is the way we can have a very honest, very transparent inquiry about the in-action decisions teachers make and determine how that reality impacts the professional growth of teachers.

CONSULTING

As a consultant, I have learned to collapse the walls of my experiences to coalesce into the kind of perspective, questions, and clarity necessary for moving forward. I have collected a variety of experiences:

  • Curriculum designer and writer
  • Programming developer and implementer
  • Advisor for non-education organizations
  • Coach and trusted resource for administrators and education service providers

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