What I’ve Done

I Use Human Centered Design To Help School Leaders Build The School They Want

I believe any competent school leader can build the school they want. The issue I’ve run into over the years is that the energy needed to create movement is very different than the energy needed to manage or sustain a system. Built on a foundation of empathy, I utilize human centered design to help leaders make small incremental progress toward flushing out their vision and helping them make habits out of the small things that move organizations toward realizing their vision. 

Rallying People Around a Common Goal

Leadership

At our Department chair meeting staff were struggling to come together on a plan to showcase student work.  Alex took the opportunity to put in place a simple and efficient framework which allowed us to move forward.  Alex has a wonderful ability to step back from the big picture and focus on those integral initial steps that are so important when forming the basis of any large project 

Rocko Wells – Special Ed Teacher

Designing For School Equity

Equity

Alex brings a unique lens to our equity work. Combining his outside advocacy work with a depth of knowledge and experience working with underprivileged students, he is able to work with school staff on building a plan that moves a school toward their equity goals.

Chris Miller – District Administrator 

Integrating restorative practices

Restorative Practices

Alex has been instrumental in modeling and regularly implementing restorative practices.  His calm demeanor and dedication to helping students learn to own their part and commit to their piece of repairing the harm is admirable.  

Jaime Goelz – School Social Worker

Increasing A Team's Capacity For Working With Challenging Students

Working With Students

Bruzan is a huge part of our administrative staff. The energy he brings to the building, combined with his consistent follow-through and care for students of all walks of life make him into an outstanding leader.  Our school is a much better place when he is around. 

John Dewitt – Teacher

Identifying And Building Traction Around Solving A School's Larger Systemic Problems

Systemic Problem Solving

Mr. Bruzan asks excellent, thought-provoking questions. He excels at identifying the problems of practices, helping teams brainstorm goals, and moving toward solutions. 

Laura Sproul – Principal

Creating Non-Traditional Learning Experiences

Non-Traditional Learning

Alex’s interests outside of school help drive him in creating powerful learning experiences for students AND staff in school. That’s what education should be like. I’ve never felt as empowered as a professional as I did when working with Alex.
 
Kayleigh Bitters – Teacher

Helping Schools Shift Toward The Culture They Want

Culture

Alex inspires and encourages leaders and teachers to reflect on current systems and structures and redesign them in a way that better meets the community they serve.  He asks questions that require deep reflection while also supporting action plans that yield results.  He is a thoughtful listener and capitalizes on strengths as he supports individuals and teams through the design process. 

Kristen Swoboda – Deeper Learning Coach

Encouraging and Empowering Teachers

Empowerment

Alex Bruzan came into my school under a unique set of circumstances and brought in the positivity and “yes man” mentality. Teachers who were asking if they could do something, he trusted them and what they believed in and said YES, let’s figure out how to make it happen. Alex has a sense of calm to him while also having a presence of power. He is a laid back guy on the outside, but on his insides he’s the one who puts the energizer bunny to sleep. 

Ben Heicher – Teacher

Resume

21/22 – 22/23 

School Years

Freelance Work

Hoover Elementary - Administrative Support

At Hoover, I stepped in for the principal who was on a long term absence. When I started there, radio calls were nearly non-stop and it felt like the staff was waiting for the next bad thing to happen. I finished the school year with that team and stayed on in a part time support roll for the remainder of 22/23. Today, the culture has been turned into something drastically different with a massive downturn in behavioral issues and a successful transition to a new school leader.

Nathan Hale High School - Part Time Administrator

Nathan Hale High School is a well run, high functioning comprehensive high school and are known for their high levels academic achievement. With shifting demographics within the city of West Allis, Nathan Hale will soon become a majority minority school with steadily increasing numbers of students who identify as economically disadvantaged. This shift has required the building to adapt by increasing the amount of instances where restorative justice is used in place of punitive consequence and reframe their understanding of educational equity. As a part time assistant principal, I integrated the former into my work to help the team take steps in the direction of equity by helping staff build the habits needed to create the school culture they aspired to have.

District Leadership Team - Ad Hoc Member

I redesigned the West Allis/West Milwaukee School District's school improvement planning process to focus on small incremental growth toward reaching individual buildings goals that work in harmony with the district's long range strategic plan.

Other Work

I created the template for a district's edublog student portfolio system. I filled in as an administrator on an as needed basis in multiple schools. I also worked with building leaders to flush out their vision for schools and helped to identify cultural or systemic issues that were hurdles in realizing their vision.

18/19 –  20/21

School Years

James E Dottke PBL High School

Deeper Learning Coach

This was my first foray in school design. After years of conducting informal empathy interviews with students, I realized we could organize ourselves differently as a school to better meet the needs of our students. As we began to go down the road of shifting how we educated our students, we conducted formal interviews with roughly 100 students. During those interviews we asked kids what they had done in their educational career that they were proud of. Only one could name something. This became the driving force for a vision recast and the subsequent structural redesign turning James E Dottke Alternative School into James E Dottke Project Based Learning High School. In order to do this work, we needed to shift in three main areas: the work kids did, the way staff worked together, and the way we interfaced with the community. Obviously, shifting methods of instruction and assessment were necessary to go from a traditional school model to a PBL model, but the real work took place in helping kids find purpose in their school work. In order to ensure we were all on the same page as a staff, we set out to formalize our vision through a series of vision documents anchored around the values we all held in common and the strategies we would implement to carry out those values. Finally the public perception of Dottke was in need of some work. Dottke was known literally as the "school for bad kids" and we worked hard to rebrand ourselves. Recently, Dottke held it's spring exhibition night where close to 100% of students presented an artifact showcasing work they were proud of at a public event where dozens and dozens of community members along with family and friends celebrated the work they did during the second semester of the 22/23 school year. All of this work was done in conjunction with a team of people, but did require myself and my counterpart, a fantastic human being, to continue to perform all of the functions required of a school administrator.

10/11 – 18/19

School Years

Jame E Dottke Alternative School

Alternative High School Math Teacher and Innovation Coach

For the majority of my tenure at James E Dottke Alternative School, I taught high school math. The last three years of my employment there I was also the innovation coach for the building. My duties in that role involved managing our 1:1 technology initiative and the library.

07/08 – 09/10

School Years

Milwaukee Renaissance Academy

Middle School Math Teacher

I taught middle school math at a charter school on the north side of Milwaukee.