About Me:
I wear many hats and have a multitude of interests, but this page is devoted to my professional work. My professional mission is to make schools places where both students and teachers thrive. It's not rocket science, but the effect of a good teacher on a student is profound, lifelong, and transformative. I want to help make that possibility more prevalent for kids in the U.S.
Key Milestones in my Professional Journey
As a student in the 70s and 80s in New York and Florida, I experienced a wide variety of teaching styles and school contexts. My third grade teacher had a lasting influence on me. Mrs. Jacobs taught in the experimental, circular wing of our elementary school where all the rooms were connected via moving panels. In the center of the circle sat a large, white old-fashioned claw-footed bathtub with a soft pillow inside. There, I spent many happy hours reading during the school day. We were allowed to move around the common space freely, depending on what was happening in the classroom. I loved Mrs. Jacobs and third grade. I learned about hatching chicks, scuba diving, and Roald Dahl. It was such a contrast to my 2nd grade class, where our teacher forced miscreant students to wear dunce caps, press a piece of wadded gum to the wall with their nose for an hour, or repeat sounds they were making (such as popping their lips with their finger) over and over until they bled. These early experiences formed a deep sense in me for the value of a good teacher.
I moved to Florida with my family in 10th grade. High school was boring and easy, a sharp contrast to the excellent public education I had received in Westchester County, NY, where, though I lived on the "wrong side of the tracks," I benefited from a stellar public school system.
I left high school a year early and attended UCF in lieu of my senior year. I transferred to New College of Florida in Sarasota, completing a BA degree in Humanities with an emphasis in philosophy and education. I dedicated my undergraduate thesis to “the transformation of the present educational system in America,” writing in the preface:
After much reflection, I’m a convinced that the present educational system no longer “works” ….My hope is that in recasting the debate with respect to the positive and practical implications of contemporary postmodern thought, others will be encouraged to reevaluate their own positions….Now it remains to me to continue what I have begun. For as Bernstein writes…, we “must prove the truth…of [our] thinking in practice.
After graduation, I moved out West and waited tables to clear my head of Derrida. I also learned to identify mountain wildflowers. Once I was ready to tackle academics again, I applied to an innovative, post-baccalaureate paid teacher training program at the University of New Mexico where I was introduced to the work of Vygotksy, who ended up having a profound influence on the rest of my professional career.
I taught 4th, 5th, and 8th grade, first in New Mexico, then in Colorado, and found myself leading our school’s educational reform efforts, which at the time were centered in outcome-based education (OBE). When the OBE movement was shut down in Colorado, I saw firsthand how politics can derail educational reform. Still burning with questions, after 5 years of teaching, I applied to doctoral programs in educational psychology to pursue the questions my early reading of Vygostky inspired in me.
At UF, I became fascinated with the role of beliefs in behavioral change during a social psychology course I took with Dolores AlbarracĂn. I spent hours sketching out on large flip charts the possible ways to influence behavior change in mathematics teachers, as I puzzled over why teachers espoused one set of beliefs about teaching mathematics and then enacted practices that contradicted those beliefs. This work culminated in my first major publication articulating a new model of belief change, The Cognitive Affective Model of Conceptual Change. I was deeply supported in my independent exploration by my beloved advisor, Dr. Patricia Ashton.
In 2003, I became an assistant professor at the University of Central Florida and found great joy in teaching undergraduate education majors about child development and learning theories to help them become better teachers. To my discouragement, I found that much of what my colleagues and I were teaching undergraduates often did not make its way into their practice due to systemic influences on schooling that were pervasive and resistant to change.
After obtaining tenure and promotion to Associate Professor, I decided to effect change on a systematic level by starting a school. I began by putting out calls in social media outlining a new type of school, one based on caring and support of all its students (and teachers), grounded in educational psychology principles and research. In 2011, the Galileo School for Gifted Learning opened its doors in a high-poverty area of Sanford, Florida. It was open to all students: "gifted learning” in the title refers to focusing on all students’ strengths and gifts and building on them as opposed to a deficit model often held by traditional schools.
In 2015, Galileo School was recognized by APA for its developmentally-appropriate instruction and curricular approach and awarded the Golden Psi Award by APA’s Board of Educational Affairs and continues to be a top-ranked school in Florida. A second campus opened in 2021.
I have received some lovely awards for my work. I detail them on my consulting page.
More About Me:
I have two children and have been married almost three decades to my favorite rocket scientist.
I wrote a book for parents about schooling but it didn't sell well, and it's now out of print, which makes me sad because I poured everything I knew about schooling into that little book to help parents navigate the complex k12 years. Plus, it was the most "me" of my published work, most authentically in my voice. I think having "Millennial" in the title did not help the book's chances for success, but the publisher insisted on the title, so that was that.
I am an idealist, highly critical, and deeply loving. "Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes)." -Walt Whitman
I love poetry but I cannot write it. At least that's what my old writing teacher, Mac Miller, told me at New College. I can write a decent prose poem though. Mac said that once in class, and I owned it.
I can't sing. I wish I could. I did learn to play bass guitar in my late 40s, though, so that is a sweet consolation prize.
I cry almost every day. This world breaks my heart.
I am a Catholic revert, though I have been through deconstruction and reconstruction of my faith, and now I'm just in a place of learning to surrender to beauty, listen for truth, and act in love.
I love to ride my bike. There are few pleasures equal to the rush I get from riding my bike fast on bike paths.
I'm an avid birdwatcher and have been for over 15 years, before it got trendy. I have about 11+ feeders in my yard (I put out extra during the spring for when the goldfinches pop by).
One of my dreams is to create an intentional community. It would have to have lots of trees🌳🌳🌳
Current Work and Social Media
You can read more about current projects on my now page. My CV and more about my work at UCF is on UCF's faculty page. I'm also on Blue Sky and LinkedIn.