I work with buildings to provide additional support in a coach/assistant principal role. You identify which of my areas of expertise you want me to focus on and I make movement in those areas while fulfilling typical coach/AP roles. You purchase blocks of time at an hourly rate and I help your teams identify and reach their goals.
Equity gaps are predictable, pervasive and produce outcomes none of us want. I have spent years working in schools and in my community to address those gaps and firmly believe equity is not an unobtainable dream, but it is not a result we will achieve without intentional action. The process for moving the needle requires an honest look at our data and developing a systematic plan for getting results. I work with schools to dig into why we see the gaps we do, identify concrete action steps, and walk with teams as we make progress in taking steps toward equity.
The challenge with teaching restorative practices is that you typically need them in high stress situations where you are hoping to solving a conflict and not make the situation worse. Relying on a training conducted on a low stress, sterile environment predictably has its limitations. I believe using restorative practices is not unlike any other classroom management skill. It takes instruction, practice, and reflection. I can teach your staff how to implement restorative practices by spending time with them and teaching these strategies in real time while solving real problems.
I’ve studied habits and goal setting for years. What I have learned is the student and staff culture within a building is the direct result of the regular, repeated interactions with teachers and administrators. When working with a school, together we identify what we want to be about to say about our student or staff culture and then use backwords design to engineer the desired culture.
No one can argue that the world is a very different place than it was even a generation ago. The needs of our students are ever evolving and the modes of instruction we offer should follow suit. The problem I’ve identified is that we get busy and are not intentional around our planning. It’s easier to do what we have done before instead of dream up what school could be. I work with teachers to dream, design, and implement non-traditional educational experiences for their students and help create structures and systems that “play nice” with traditional date management systems.
Few if any schools I have worked at have a written out plan for what they want to be about. A guiding set of vision documents curated by the team that will carry out that vision takes time and unfortunately moves the bottom of the priority list when kids walk through the door. I work with schools to tease out their vision and use human centered design to synthesize individual desires into a cohesive vision that moves buildings in the direction they want to go.