Experience & Philosophy

Curriculum design, professional development, and advanced learning systems

My work has been shaped by a consistent observation:

Students identified as advanced do not always experience appropriate challenge in classrooms, and all students need greater access to rigorous, challenge and enrichment.

I approach this work as both a classroom practitioner and a systems designer—holding attention on instructional detail while working toward coherence across a system.

  • My work stays close to practice. It is shaped through time in classrooms, conversations with teachers, and careful attention to student work—where expectations become visible. Advanced learning is defined by what students are asked to do, not the program they are placed in.

  • Identification matters, but instruction determines whether potential develops.

  • If rigor isn’t visible in daily instruction, it isn’t part of the system

Elected Board Member of the Illinois Association of Gifted Children

    • Designing advanced learning systems that hold up in classrooms

    • Translating gifted education into daily instructional practice

    • Building rigor through questioning and student thinking

    • Aligning programs to the learners in front of us

    • Closing the gap between advanced learning theory and classroom reality

    • Designing curriculum for depth, transfer, and authentic application

    • Expanding access without lowering expectations

    • Working alongside teachers to support real-time implementation

    • Designing professional learning that shifts classroom practice

    • Strengthening coherence across classrooms and systems

  • More than 20 years of experience across classroom teaching, district leadership, curriculum design, and professional learning in gifted and advanced learning.

    Author of Shakespeare Amazes in the Classroom (Routledge).
    Work includes university-affiliated professional learning through the Belin-Blank Center for Gifted Education at the University of Iowa, as well as statewide and regional organizations.

    Experience includes:

    • K–8 gifted program and systems design

    • Curriculum review, revision, and alignment for rigor and depth

    • Teacher professional learning (in-person and virtual)

    • Instructional coaching and classroom-based support

    • Development of enrichment and advanced learning pathways

    • Integration of literacy, writing, and interdisciplinary curriculum design