Through my work with Project Zero (PZ) research center at Harvard Graduate School of Education, I’ve been fortunate to be able to work with educators (teachers, administrators, coaches, and more!) in a huge variety of contexts and places. This work usually involves introducing or deepening understanding of research frameworks that I’ve been a part of creating at PZ. I love this work because I have a passion for bridging the distance between theory and practice, and because I’m always so fascinated and inspired by the creativity of educators to take work that I know well in totally new and exciting directions. You can learn more about some of the frameworks that I’ve used in this work on my Research page.

I always enjoy working with professors and other educators as they think through the experiences they want to provide for their students, and it’s exciting to me to find common interests where I can help to add to an instructor’s course offerings by bringing in some of my background and experiences. The place that I have done guest lecturing most extensively has been at the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Arts in Education Ed.M. program, with Dr. Steve Seidel. For several years, I worked with Steve to guest lecture on the topic of assessment in arts education contexts in the core course for the Arts in Education program. While I continue to maintain my interest in the arts and other creative endeavors, these days I also bring my more recent learnings from research into Professional Learning Networks, inquiry-based education, and school-based innovation to classroom contexts.

Through Project Zero’s Creating Communities of Innovation and Creando Comunidades de Indagación (Creating Communities of Inquiry) research initiatives, I’ve had the honor of working with educators in a wide variety of contexts to support their professional learning and help them feel empowered to recognize opportunities for change in their own practice—and to enact those changes. I think of partnering with Professional Learning Communities and Networks as a marathon rather than a sprint, and I really enjoy being part of the learning journey of the educators with whom I’ve had the privilege to do this work. If you’d like to learn more about their stories and the research behind it, make sure to check out the Inquiry-Driven Innovation book and a 2023 Project Zero white paper called Deeper, Together.

In addition to professional development work that I’ve done through research initiatives and consulting engagements, I’ve also worked with groups of educators long-term and designed in-depth, targeted professional development experiences for them. This was a large part of my work with The ArtScience Prize, an international network of educational programs that helped students from middle school to graduate level to develop and bring to fruition interdisciplinary ideas around an annual scientific theme. As the International Director for Education for this network of programs, I worked with a talented teach of staff and educators to design and deliver professional learning experiences on a wide variety of areas of need for our programs: from workshops on the in’s and out’s of program administration, to interactive experiences that helped educators to better understand and create curriculum around cutting-edge scientific topics.

I really enjoy being able to work on consulting projects with clients because it gives me an opportunity to stretch my skills set, make new connections, and help some fantastic organizations to achieve their goals through short-term partnerships. In the past, I’ve worked with wonderful organizations like The Urbano Project, a community arts non-profit in Boston with a strong focus on young people, community care, and social change. My consulting partnership with Urbano spanned several years, during which I helped them to create and implement assessment and evaluation systems for their youth arts programs. More recently, I’ve had the honor of working with Hatch Partners in Play, a Pittsburgh-based nonprofit organizations that works to ignite joy, confidence, and community through play. I worked with Partners in Play in spring 2023 to help them communicate the importance of their programming, and the research background behind it.