Educational Leadership Coach/Consultant

• Aug 2021 - Present

Adjunct Faculty

• Jul 2017 - Present

Teaching Fellows Program, Secondary School English Education Teaching Fellows Program, Secondary School English Education

Managing Director

• Oct 2017 - Present

Educational Leadership and Classroom Practice Consultant

• Jun 2017 - Present

Executive Director, National Facilitation

• Jan 2016 - Jun 2017

I served as a member of the national team responsible for leading facilitative and content planning and delivery of a number of highly effective professional development opportunities. These spanned the portfolio of New Leaders’ programs: Leading Instruction, Emerging Leaders, Aspiring Principals, New Principal Induction, Principal Institute and Principal Supervisor Communities of Practice. The programs collectively train over 500 K- 12 urban school leaders every year across the country. I worked on the development and revision of curricula for several leadership programs; supervised and supported Regional Leadership Facilitators at various sites throughout the country; and facilitated nationally designed training sessions at regional sites for a number of New Leaders programs. Show less

Director, Transitions to Leadership

• Sep 2012 - Jul 2015

From September 2012 - July 2015, I served as a program director for the Office of Leadership of the New York City Department of Education, the largest school system in the country. One of only six districts in the United States to receive the Principal Pipeline Initiative Grant from the Wallace Foundation, our office was strategic in deploying our team in the stewardship of this grant, which has fostered the development and implementation of robust programs that meet the city’s school leadership development goals. My responsibilities included but were not limited to: * creating, designing, evolving and implementing all aspects of the Assistant Principal Leadership Institute, a 10-month program which prepared 50 -75 assistant principals each year for their eventual transition to the role of school principal, helping them to shift their current assistant principal perspective to that of a school building principal/leader in order to assume the complex and multi-faceted responsibilities of public school leadership. APLI has been a sustainable and replicable job-embedded model which develops leadership values and strengths while utilizing strong school evaluation and performance assessment instruments. *collaborating in the development and implementation of The New Principal Intensive, an 8-day “camp” with continued mentoring support for NYC principals in their first year on the job, and*partnering in the creation and implementation of the NYC DOE’s Teacher Leadership Program, which develops school-based teacher leaders in their work with teacher teams in more than 50 school sites yearly. Show less

Principal

• Aug 2008 - Sep 2012

From 2008 - 2012, I was the principal and sole administrator of Humanities Preparatory Academy, a small public high school which started in 1993 as a site-based program in a larger school, and subsequently became a fully recognized public high school in 1997. I was responsible not only for the oversight of all operational and administrative work, but more critically for upholding a vision for education based in robust instruction and balanced intellectual and affective growth for all members of the school community. Fortifying systems and structures such as collaborative leadership as well as enhancing the rich and reflective school culture was crucial to HPA's growth and success. I also had the privilege of mentoring two principal interns, both of whom are now highly successful NYC public high school principals.• Performance highlights include increased attendance, graduation and staff retention rates, as well as the collaborative creation of a vertical curriculum aligned with the Common Core State Standards. From 2008 to 2012, attendance increased by almost 10%, while the 4-year graduation rate rose from 41% in 2008 to 95% by August of 2011. Staff retention increased by 60%.• HPA (a pioneer in the "small schools"​ movement) is a National Mentor School with the Coalition of Essential Schools and partners with the NYC Writing Project and the LGBT Community Center. A member school of the NY Performance Standards Consortium, "Prep" students graduate via performance-based assessment tasks and their presentation rather than solely by NY State Regents Examinations. Other features are a democratic, distributive leadership model, heterogeneous multi-age courses and college partnerships for coursework.• HPA’s restorative justice system, based in seven core values and a “Fairness Committee” received a 2009 award by the NY Civil Liberties Union, featured in their July 2009 monograph Safety with Dignity: Alternatives to the Over-Policing of Schools. Show less

Teacher-consultant/writing & literacy coach; adjunct professor

• Sep 1998 - Aug 2008

I served from 2005-2008 as a full-time professional development consultant in writing and literacy learning across all content areas for faculty members of the Theater Arts Production Company Middle School/High School, an arts-centered 7-12 school. Responsibilities included participation in leadership and professional development teams for long- and short-range planning; creation and facilitation of professional development sessions for middle school and high school teachers in collaboration with the principal, the assistant principals, and the school’s literacy coach; and working alongside classroom teachers, staff developers and administrators to assist them in formulating curricula and implementing reading and writing strategies to support student literacy in all academic and creative domains. School-based work with students included running a student advisory group and occasionally teaching high school electives. • I served in a similar capacity from 1998 – 2005 in various District 10 middle schools and later, in Region 2 middle schools. • Throughout the 10-year period with the NYC Writing Project, my responsibilities also included co-planning, producing and implementing professional development sessions and series for the Project. These workshops explored themes and material ranging from in-depth curriculum planning to inter-disciplinary literacy building and cohesive writing not only for teacher teams, but for teams of literacy coaches, principals, district literacy coordinators and other professional development staff. In this capacity, I also served as an adjunct professor for Lehman College, teaching both site-based writing and literacy development graduate level courses for teachers, as well as teaching for the Lehman College of Education's Middle and High School Education program. Show less

Classroom Teacher

• Sep 1986 - Sep 1998

I began my work in education as a classroom teacher in District 3 in Manhattan, working first at P.S. 9 on the Upper West Side and then at P.S. 144 in Central Harlem. I was a third grade teacher and then team leader for five years, pioneering the development and work of grade teams in the school at my own initiative. With my de-facto team, I co-created and taught rich multicultural curricula to promote the academic and affective growth of children from varied backgrounds. I also served for three years as the Spanish/English Dual Language program coordinator and K-1 teacher, responsible for development and implementation of culturally relevant and age-appropriate curricula in both Spanish and English. Goals were fluency and literacy in both languages for all program students. I then transitioned into working with older students as a classroom teacher at East Side Community High School. At East Side, where working in teams was already well established, I collaborated with colleagues on staff to plan, implement and teach integrated, standards-based curricula for 7th/8th grade Humanities, advisory and ESL. I also co-created the curricula for and taught the following: Spanish and ESL for grades 9-12; the library program for grades 7-12; the advisory/electives curricula for grades 7 - 10. I look back on collaborating and working at East Side as one of the most formative experiences of my teaching career. Show less