Leadership Philosophy & Growth
I believe great schools are built through people, not programs. Strong curriculum, innovative initiatives, and impressive facilities all have value, but lasting success comes from talented educators working toward a shared vision in an environment where they feel trusted, supported, and accountable.
My leadership style is collaborative, visible, and relationship-driven. I do not believe in leading from behind a desk. Leaders should spend time where learning happens—in classrooms, alongside teachers, with students, and in conversation with families. Trust is built through consistency, transparency, and follow-through.
I strive to create schools where adults continue learning alongside children, where innovation is encouraged, and where high expectations are paired with meaningful support. Leadership is not simply about directing others; it is about creating the conditions for people to do their best work and developing future leaders throughout the organization.
I also believe that strong schools continue to grow and evolve. Successful improvement begins with listening. Resistance is rarely about the change itself; it is often about people feeling that change is being done to them rather than with them. Before implementing new initiatives, I work to ensure that teachers, students, and families understand both the purpose behind the change and the desired outcome.
My approach balances long-term vision with practical implementation. I establish clear goals, communicate expectations openly, monitor progress consistently, and remain willing to adjust course when evidence suggests a different path is needed. Effective leadership requires confidence, but it also requires humility.
Sustainable growth happens when people understand the vision, feel ownership of the process, and can see evidence of progress along the way.
Recruiting & Retaining Excellent Teachers
Recruiting exceptional teachers is one of the most important responsibilities of school leadership, and it requires understanding who someone is as a person, not just what’s on their CV. Some of the best educators and leaders I have worked with revealed their real strengths through conversation and observation rather than credentials on paper—qualities like empathy, emotional intelligence, warmth, instinct about children, resilience, and dedication.
Qualifications, certifications, and experience matter, and so does something harder to measure: commitment to children, adaptability, willingness to learn, and the passion someone brings to their work every day. That combination is what distinguishes the most impactful educators I’ve worked with, regardless of how their resume reads on paper.
Coaching & Development
One of the most important responsibilities of a school leader is developing people.
I believe professional growth is an ongoing process rather than a series of isolated workshops. Effective development happens through coaching conversations, classroom observations, collaborative planning, reflection, and continuous follow-up throughout the year.
Teachers perform at their best when expectations are clear, communication is open, and leadership is predictable. I believe accountability works best when it is grounded in shared goals rather than compliance. Educators should understand not only what is expected of them, but why those expectations matter for children.
When someone is struggling, my first question is not, “Who is at fault?” but rather, “What support, clarity, or development is needed?” Most performance challenges stem from gaps in skill, communication, or support rather than a lack of commitment. My responsibility as a leader is to identify the root cause, provide appropriate guidance, and ensure expectations remain clear.
My approach begins by identifying strengths and building from them. Every educator brings valuable skills and experiences to a school community, and meaningful growth occurs when coaching recognizes those strengths while providing clear next steps for development.
I also believe schools become stronger when leadership is distributed. Developing future curriculum leaders, coordinators, and administrators creates capacity throughout the organization and ensures that leadership is not concentrated in a single individual.
When teachers grow professionally, students benefit directly.
School Culture
School culture is not created through mission statements. It is created through daily interactions, shared expectations, and the way people treat one another.
I believe positive culture must be built intentionally. Students should feel safe, valued, and known. Staff should feel trusted, supported, and empowered to do their best work. Families should feel welcomed as genuine partners in the educational journey.
Strong cultures balance warmth with high expectations. They create a sense of belonging while also challenging students and adults to grow, contribute, and take responsibility for the community they are part of.
The healthiest school communities create environments where both children and adults can thrive.
Family Partnerships & Dialogue
Families are a child's first and most enduring influence. Strong schools recognize that parents and caregivers bring invaluable knowledge about their children, and meaningful partnerships create the consistency and support that help students thrive.
I believe communication should be proactive, transparent, and relationship-centered. Families should hear about successes, celebrations, and growth—not only concerns.
Some of the most important conversations in schools happen when concerns, disagreements, or strong emotions are present. When handled well, these moments can strengthen trust rather than diminish it.
My approach is grounded in empathy, clarity, professionalism, and active listening. Parents almost always want what is best for their children, even when concerns or emotions are running high. Beginning with that assumption changes the nature of the conversation.
I focus on understanding concerns, communicating honestly, and working collaboratively toward solutions that support the child's wellbeing and development.
The goal is not simply to resolve a problem. The goal is to preserve and strengthen the relationship so that families continue to view the school as a trusted partner in their child's education.
Safeguarding & Wellbeing
Children learn best when they feel safe, secure, and connected.
Safeguarding extends far beyond policies and procedures. It requires creating environments where students know they are respected, supported, and able to seek help when needed. It also requires ensuring that every adult understands their responsibility in protecting and supporting children.
I believe wellbeing is not a separate initiative. It should be woven into the daily life of a school—from classroom relationships and social-emotional learning to behavior support, family partnerships, and the way a community cares for one another.
Academic success and student wellbeing are deeply interconnected. Schools that prioritize both create stronger outcomes for children and healthier learning communities overall.
Educational Philosophy
I believe children learn best when they are intellectually engaged, emotionally secure, and actively involved in making sense of the world around them. Understanding is constructed through questioning, investigating, making connections, testing ideas, and revising our thinking—not simply through receiving information. Excellent education should develop not only what students know, but how they think, communicate, collaborate, question, and approach the world around them.
I believe in holding high expectations for every child while recognizing that children do not all reach those expectations in the same way or on the same timeline. Rigor and developmentally appropriate practice are not opposing ideas. The strongest learning environments provide the structure, challenge, and intentional teaching children need while also leaving room for curiosity, creativity, movement, exploration, and joy.
The teacher’s role is both intentional and responsive. Teachers are not simply the source of knowledge in the room; they are the architects of environments in which meaningful thinking can happen. They provide explicit instruction when it is needed, ask questions that open possibilities, notice what students are curious about, and adjust their approach based on what students are showing them. They also know when to step back and allow productive struggle to continue, because sometimes the thinking that happens while working through a challenge is where the deepest learning occurs.
I also believe students should gradually become increasingly independent in their learning. Even young children can make choices, ask meaningful questions, explain their thinking, reflect on their learning, and take responsibility for their work. Student agency does not mean removing structure or leaving children to teach themselves. Clear expectations, predictable routines, and thoughtfully designed environments give students the security they need to take intellectual risks and develop genuine independence. Agency without structure is chaos; structure without agency is compliance.
Whole-child education is central to my philosophy. Academic achievement matters deeply, but children cannot be separated from their social, emotional, physical, and developmental needs. A child who feels safe, known, and supported is better positioned to engage deeply with learning. Academic rigor and wellbeing are therefore not competing priorities; they are interconnected parts of a strong educational environment.
Ultimately, I want classrooms to feel purposeful and alive. I look for classrooms where children are asking their own questions, willing to be wrong in front of their peers, talking about their thinking, making connections, and learning from mistakes. The goal is not simply for students to know more. It is for them to become increasingly capable, curious, and independent learners who understand themselves as active participants in their own education.
Child Development
Understanding child development isn’t background knowledge that sits behind good teaching — it’s the foundation good teaching is built on. Every decision I make about curriculum, classroom design, and expectations starts with a clear-eyed understanding of what children are developmentally capable of, and capable of becoming, at a given stage. This is different from simply knowing developmental milestones; it means understanding why those milestones matter and how they show up differently in every child.
Development happens across several interconnected domains, and children rarely progress through them at the same rate. Physical and motor development — from the large-motor skills that let a three-year-old climb and balance, to the fine-motor control needed to hold a pencil with control — shapes what a child can actually do in a classroom, long before it shapes what they understand. A child who hasn’t yet developed the fine-motor strength to write fluently may not have an academic difficulty at all; their physical development may simply not yet support the task we’re asking them to perform.
Cognitive development is not linear either. Young children think concretely before they think abstractly, and their capacity to hold multiple ideas in mind, reason about cause and effect, or understand another person’s perspective develops gradually and unevenly, continuing well beyond the early years and into adolescence. Effective teaching meets children where their thinking actually is, not where a curriculum map assumes it should be.
Language development underlies nearly everything else — a child’s ability to understand instructions, express a need, negotiate a friendship, or participate in a conversation about ideas. I pay close attention to language not just as a subject to be taught, but as the medium through which most other learning and social connection happens.
Social-emotional development is often the domain most overlooked when schools focus narrowly on academics, but it is arguably the most consequential, and it continues developing throughout Primary and beyond, not just in the early years. A child’s capacity for emotional regulation, their ability to navigate conflict, and their developing sense of identity and belonging aren’t separate from learning readiness — they are learning readiness. When a child is dysregulated, their ability to access and use their thinking can be significantly affected.
Closely related is executive function — the still-developing capacity to plan, focus attention, resist impulses, hold information in working memory, and shift between tasks. These skills develop dramatically across early childhood and continue developing well into adolescence, and they vary enormously between children of the same age. A child who struggles to sit still or follow a multi-step direction isn’t necessarily being defiant — executive function may simply be part of the picture, alongside other possible factors worth understanding before assuming otherwise.
What all of this means in practice is that I never assume two children of the same age are developmentally in the same place — because they almost never are. Some children arrive advanced in language but still developing physically; others have remarkable emotional maturity but are cognitively still very concrete. This is normal, expected variation, not simply a deficit to be corrected — though it does still call for real support and appropriately high expectations once we understand what’s actually behind it. When a child isn’t developmentally where a curriculum assumes they should be, my first response isn’t to push harder — it’s to ask what that child needs, and to work closely with families and specialists to understand the fuller picture.
This developmental lens shapes how I build teams, too. I want teachers who can look at a child’s behavior and ask, “What does this tell me about where they are developmentally?” rather than simply, “How do I get this child to comply?” That distinction — between managing behavior and understanding development — is, to me, the difference between a school that controls children and one that actually knows them.
Early Years Philosophy & Reggio Emilia
The early years are a distinct period of development with their own characteristics, needs, and possibilities. During these years, children are building foundational capacities that shape their learning for years to come: language, movement, relationships, emotional regulation, cognitive flexibility, independence, and a sense of themselves as capable learners. I believe early childhood education should protect the richness of this developmental stage while giving children the strong foundations they need for what comes next.
I believe play is a primary language of early childhood learning—not a reward for finishing “real work.” Through play, children investigate how the world works, practice new skills, process emotions, develop relationships, and construct understanding. A child building with blocks is exploring spatial relationships, balance, persistence, and collaboration. A child engaged in dramatic play is developing language, empathy, and narrative thinking. Play is not separate from learning in the early years; it is one of the ways learning happens.
At the same time, play-based learning does not mean an unfacilitated classroom. Intentional teaching matters enormously. Teachers design environments with purposeful materials, observe what children are exploring, ask questions that deepen thinking, introduce new language and concepts, and know when to step in and when to allow children to continue exploring independently. The goal is neither a chaotic free-for-all nor a classroom where play is incidental to teacher-directed instruction. It is a carefully designed environment in which play, inquiry, and intentional teaching work together.
The environment itself is an important part of the curriculum. Thoughtfully designed spaces invite children to explore, make choices, collaborate, create, and return to ideas over time.
What drew me to Reggio Emilia wasn’t a theory I read about first and then tried to apply. It was recognition. I encountered it after years of already believing that children were far more capable of complex thought than most classrooms gave them credit for, and Reggio gave language and structure to something I’d been circling around instinctively for a long time. I’ve never been comfortable in environments where adults assume they need to simplify a child’s world rather than genuinely listen to what that child is already noticing, wondering, and thinking.
Studying Reggio seriously changed something concrete in how I lead, not just how I feel. I started taking documentation far more seriously — not paperwork for its own sake, but the practice of capturing what a child says, draws, builds, and wonders about, then using that as real evidence for what should happen next. I’ve also become much more deliberate about the physical environment itself: the idea that a classroom’s layout and materials can either invite genuine exploration or quietly shut it down, and that this is a design decision, not an afterthought. This remains active, ongoing work for me, not something I studied once and set aside. I continue that engagement through an Advanced Study Group because I’m still learning from the approach, and because I don’t think I’m finished learning what it has to teach me about how children think.
Language development is central to early years education, particularly in multilingual communities. In the early years, children may be developing competence and confidence in multiple languages simultaneously. I see multilingualism as a strength and an opportunity rather than a barrier. Rich conversation, storytelling, songs, books, and authentic opportunities to communicate give children the language foundations they need while allowing them to maintain meaningful connections to their families and communities.
I also think carefully about the concept of readiness. Readiness is not a fixed point that a child either reaches or does not reach at a particular age. Development occurs across physical, social, emotional, and cognitive domains, and children may be further along in one area than another. Rather than simply asking, “Is this child ready for Grade 1?” I believe the more useful question is, “What does this child need in order to thrive?” That perspective allows educators and families to provide appropriate support while maintaining high expectations.
The early years should feel alive with curiosity, language, creativity, and possibility. Children should leave this stage with confidence in their own thinking, increasing independence, strong The early years should feel alive with curiosity, language, creativity, and possibility. Children should leave this stage with confidence in their own thinking, increasing independence, strong social and emotional foundations, and a genuine love of learning. They should also have strong foundations in language and early literacy—not because we are rushing them toward academics, but because language, books, stories, and communication are joyful and meaningful parts of childhood and essential foundations for everything that follows.
Transition to Primary
The move from Early Years into formal schooling is one of the most consequential transitions in a child’s education. Done poorly, it can feel like a cliff: a child spends their early years in a rich, play-based environment and then encounters an entirely different set of expectations almost overnight. Done well, it is a deliberate, gradual slope in which what a child already knows how to do is built upon rather than set aside.
Preparing children for Kindergarten and Grade 1 does not mean accelerating them toward formal instruction earlier. It means ensuring that children have developed the language, social experience, independence, and early academic foundations that allow more structured learning to feel meaningful rather than overwhelming. The transition from play to more formal academic expectations should feel like an evolution of how a child has already been learning, not a departure from it.
I believe school readiness is often misunderstood. It does not mean a child has stopped needing movement, choice, hands-on exploration, or opportunities for play. It means a child is developing the language, self-regulation, independence, and learning behaviors needed to engage with increasing structure and responsibility. Maintaining developmentally appropriate practice while increasing academic expectations is not a contradiction; it is the work of excellent Kindergarten and Grade 1 teaching. Developmentally appropriate practice does not mean holding children back; it means knowing how to increase rigor without asking children to stop being children.
Center-based learning, hands-on exploration, movement, collaboration, and choice do not need to disappear when children enter Primary. They can be woven into a more structured day alongside increasingly explicit instruction and more complex academic work. Building independence is equally important: children benefit from practicing how to manage their materials, follow multi-step routines, persist through challenges, and participate responsibly in a group. These are not simply compliance skills or compliance training; they are developmental capabilities that make sustained academic engagement possible.
A successful transition also requires genuine continuity between Early Years and Primary—not two separate systems that happen to share a building. Vertical alignment should ensure that curriculum, pedagogy, and expectations build logically from one stage to the next. But alignment on paper is not enough. It requires real collaboration: teachers talking to one another, visiting classrooms, sharing knowledge about students, and understanding what learning looks like on both sides of the transition. Families are essential partners in this process. Parents are often anxious about whether their child is “ready,” and that anxiety can sometimes translate into pressure that does not serve the child well. I believe schools have a responsibility to help families understand what readiness actually means, what to expect developmentally, and how they can support their child’s confidence and growing independence at home.
Ultimately, a successful transition is not measured by how quickly a child adapts to a more formal classroom. It is measured by whether the child enters Primary feeling capable, secure, curious, and ready for greater responsibility. The goal is to preserve the strengths children developed in the Early Years while opening the door to new levels of independence, challenge, and academic growth.
Elementary & Primary Education
Primary education is where children build on the foundations of early childhood through an increasingly wide range of tools — reading, writing, mathematical reasoning, structured inquiry, and independent thinking. It is not a shift away from active, meaning-making learning. It is an expansion of the ways a child gets to do that meaning-making.
I believe strong Primary teaching holds two things together that are often falsely treated as opposites: explicit instruction and genuine inquiry. Children need direct, well-sequenced teaching of foundational skills — decoding, number sense, writing composition and mechanics — because these are not things children reliably discover on their own, and pretending otherwise disadvantages exactly the children who need the most support. But direct instruction in foundational skills and rich, open-ended inquiry into ideas are not competing philosophies. A child can be explicitly taught to read fluently and also spend an afternoon investigating why bridges don’t fall down. The best Primary classrooms move fluidly between both, matching the approach to what’s actually being learned rather than committing to one pedagogy as an identity.
Independence is one of the central developmental tasks of the Primary years, and I think about it as something to be built deliberately, not assumed — and predictable routines are what actually make that possible. A classroom with clear, consistent structures for transitions, materials, and expectations isn’t a rigid classroom; it’s one that has freed up a child’s attention for learning instead of for figuring out what’s supposed to happen next. Good routines reduce unnecessary cognitive load, maximize real instructional time, and give children the security to take on more responsibility for themselves. A Grade 1 classroom needs more scaffolding and more explicit teaching of those routines; by the later Primary years, students should be managing much of that structure — their materials, their time, their transitions — largely on their own. That evolution, from teacher-managed structure to student-managed structure, is itself a core part of how independence gets built, not something separate from it.
Curriculum progression across the Primary years should feel coherent, not like a series of disconnected grade-level units. A strong Grade 1 program sets up what Grade 2 will build on; a strong Grade 4 program is preparing the ground for Grade 5. This requires real vertical thinking from the adults in the building — teachers who know not just their own grade level deeply, but roughly what came before and what comes next, so that a child’s learning compounds instead of resetting every September.
Classroom culture matters enormously at this stage, because children are developing not just academic skills but their identity as learners and as members of a community. I want Primary classrooms where mistakes are treated as useful information rather than something to hide, where children learn to talk about their thinking and challenge ideas respectfully, and where academic effort and kindness are both visibly valued — not because one is more important than the other, but because they’re not actually separate. A classroom where children don’t feel safe taking a risk is a classroom where real academic growth is harder to access.
Differentiation in Primary isn’t optional or occasional — every classroom holds a genuine range of readiness, language proficiency, and learning needs, and good teaching responds to that range as a matter of course, not as an accommodation bolted onto a single lesson plan designed for an imaginary average student. This is where knowing children well — not just knowing the curriculum well — becomes essential to good teaching.
Ultimately, I look for Primary education that takes children seriously as thinkers while giving them the structured skill-building and predictable routines they need to become strong readers, writers, mathematicians, and increasingly independent learners. Rigor and joy belong together here just as much as they do in Early Years — a Primary classroom should be a place where children are working hard at real things, becoming genuinely more capable, and still experiencing school as somewhere they want to be.
Inclusion & Diverse Learners
Inclusion, to me, is not primarily about accommodation — it’s about access, belonging, and participation. An inclusive classroom is one where every child, regardless of how they learn, what language they’re building fluency in, or what developmental profile they bring, has genuine access to the same rigorous learning as their peers and can meaningfully take part in the intellectual and social life of that room. That’s a different and higher bar than simply ensuring a child has the support paperwork requires.
Differentiation is how universal access happens in practice, and I think about it as a normal feature of good teaching, not a special measure triggered only by a formal diagnosis. Every classroom holds a real range of readiness, language proficiency, and learning profiles — that’s simply what a classroom is. Good teachers plan for that range as a matter of course: adjusting the level of scaffolding, the complexity of a task, the way a child demonstrates understanding, while holding the same high expectation that every child is capable of real learning.
Multilingual learners need support that looks genuinely different depending on their stage. A young child in Early Years who is building multiple languages simultaneously needs rich, embedded language exposure — conversation, story, song, authentic communication woven through everything else happening in the room. A Primary-age EAL learner faces a different challenge: navigating increasingly complex academic language while still developing conversational fluency, which means teachers need to distinguish carefully between what a student actually understands and what they’re not yet able to express in their developing language. Both are doing serious cognitive work at every stage, and multilingualism is a genuine strength these children bring — not a deficit to remediate.
Neurodiversity and learning differences deserve that same lens, and how they show up changes with age too — a young child’s needs might present through regulation, communication, or sensory response, while an older Primary student’s might show up more visibly in attention, executive function, or written output. A diagnosis or learning profile should help us understand how a student learns; it shouldn’t become a label that defines what they’re capable of. Understanding a genuine barrier should lead to better, more precise teaching — not lower expectations, and not letting a difference become the first and only thing adults see about a child.
Students working above or below grade-level expectations both need intentional teaching, not neglect disguised as independence on one end or lowered expectations disguised as support on the other. For a student below grade level, the goal is closing the gap, not making peace with it — though the pathway and pace will differ by learner, and closing a gap always starts with understanding what’s actually causing it before responding to it directly. A student working above grade level needs authentic extension, not simply more of the same task. High expectations apply to every child in the room; what changes is the pathway to reaching them.
Individualized support should be based on the learner’s actual needs and stay connected to their real classroom experience — not exist as a document separate from their daily learning. Classroom teachers remain central to that work, even when specialists are involved. Learning support specialists, EAL professionals, and counselors bring expertise a classroom teacher may not have, but the classroom teacher knows that child’s daily environment, relationships, and patterns in a way no one else does. The strongest support happens when those forms of knowledge work together, asking not just “what does this student need” but “what can we change about the environment, instruction, or support so this student can participate more successfully.”
Cultural and linguistic diversity is one of the richest assets a school community can have. This isn’t about occasional celebrations or representation added as an afterthought — it’s about children seeing their languages, cultures, and families genuinely reflected and valued within the everyday life of the classroom, not just on designated days.
Families are essential partners in understanding a child’s learning differences, and I approach those conversations with curiosity about the fuller picture rather than a deficit-focused list of what’s wrong. Parents hold context about their child a school can’t see on its own, and that knowledge should genuinely shape the support a child receives.
Ultimately, inclusion is not a separate initiative alongside everything else a school does — it’s what determines whether the philosophy in every other section of this website is actually true for every child, not just the ones for whom the standard approach happens to work.
Assessment & Progress Monitoring
I think about assessment first as a tool for understanding a learner, and only second as a way of measuring them. Its purpose is to tell us what a learner actually knows, where their thinking currently is, and what they need next — not simply to produce a score. When assessment is separated from that purpose, it becomes something schools do to children rather than something that genuinely helps them.
In Early Years, that understanding comes largely through observation and documentation. Watching how a child approaches a puzzle, listens to a story, negotiates a role in dramatic play, or talks through their thinking out loud tells us far more about their development than a formal test ever could. Anecdotal records, work samples, portfolios, and documentation of a child’s process over time — observed in authentic contexts, not artificial ones — let us see growth and understanding that a single moment of formal testing simply cannot capture. This is not a lesser form of assessment; for this age, it is often the more accurate one.
In Primary, that same understanding comes through a wider range of tools, and both formative and summative assessment play a real and increasingly important role. Formative assessment — the ongoing, in-the-moment information teachers gather through questioning, listening, and watching student work unfold — is where most of the useful, day-to-day decision-making happens: whether to move a group forward, reteach a concept, or pull a small group aside before a gap becomes entrenched.
Summative assessment — more formal checkpoints measured against clear grade-level standards and benchmarks — has genuine and growing value as children progress through Primary, showing what a learner has achieved at a defined point against a shared, meaningful standard. Neither replaces the other; a strong Primary program uses both deliberately, for the purposes each is actually suited to.
Standards and benchmarks give us a shared reference point for what learning should look like at a given stage. A benchmark tells you what a learner is expected to know or be able to do at a given stage — it doesn’t, on its own, tell you why a particular learner is or isn’t there yet; that requires the fuller picture that formative and observational evidence provide, whether the learner is four or ten. Progress monitoring, done well, means tracking individual growth over time against a meaningful baseline, not simply ranking children against one another or against a single fixed point.
Students can also demonstrate what they know through a wide range of authentic evidence — projects, presentations, writing, performance tasks, student reflection, and other demonstrations of learning that reveal understanding a traditional test might miss. The right balance depends on the learner’s age, the specific learning goal, and the information a teacher actually needs in order to plan next steps.
Progress monitoring matters most when a student isn’t making expected progress. That means understanding where the student started, identifying what the actual difficulty is — a skill gap, a language gap, a developmental gap, a gap in prior instruction — and determining whether the support being provided, whether that’s classroom differentiation, targeted intervention, or specialist support, is genuinely working. The purpose isn’t simply to identify that a child is behind; it’s to understand why, and to know what needs to change if the current support isn’t moving the needle.
None of this happens in a vacuum. A learner’s language background, developmental profile, prior educational experiences, and individual circumstances all shape what a piece of assessment evidence actually tells us. A number without that context can mislead as easily as it can inform — this is true whether we’re looking at a Kindergarten observation log or a Grade 5 assessment report. The strongest decisions combine multiple sources of evidence with the teacher’s own knowledge of the learner in front of them.
At the classroom, grade, and school level, looking at evidence together — teachers and leaders reviewing patterns, not just individual scores — helps us see whether curriculum and instruction are working as intended, and where additional support or professional development is needed. But I don’t believe schools need more data simply because they can collect it. The questions that matter are: What does the evidence actually tell us, and what should we do differently because of it?
Families deserve meaningful information about their child’s progress, in a form that makes sense for their age. For a four-year-old, that might mean a portfolio of work and a conversation about growth in language, independence, and social development. For a ten-year-old, it might mean a report grounded in specific standards alongside a teacher’s account of how that child thinks and works. In both cases, communicating progress means being able to explain strengths, next steps, and what the evidence actually shows — not simply where a child ranks.
I feel strongly that young children should not be over-tested, and I protect that boundary deliberately in Early Years — not because observation is a lesser form of evidence, but because childhood shouldn’t be spent proving itself through formal testing before it’s developmentally appropriate to ask that of a child. As children move through Primary, more formal assessment appropriately earns a larger role, but it should remain purposeful and should never replace the teacher’s own knowledge of the learner.
Ultimately, I want assessment to be part of a culture where it’s useful, not punitive — where it protects instructional time rather than consuming it, and where both teachers and learners experience it as information that helps them move forward. That standard doesn’t change from Early Years to Primary. What changes is the tool. The purpose stays exactly the same: not “how much are we measuring,” but “how well does what we learn from assessment actually change what we do next?”
Academic Excellence
Academic excellence cannot be reduced to a single number. Test scores and data matter — they tell us something real, and I take them seriously — but a percentile on its own doesn’t tell you whether a child genuinely understands what they’re learning or is simply performing it. To me, academic excellence means every child is being appropriately challenged, developing real understanding, and growing as a thinker, with the evidence to show it.
High expectations and developmental appropriateness are not competing priorities, though schools often treat them that way. Every child deserves a genuinely high standard — with the appropriate support and pathway to reach it, rather than a single fixed bar that ignores where a child actually is. Excellence, done well, requires knowing the difference between rigor and rigidity. Rigor asks more of a child’s thinking. Rigidity just asks more of their compliance.
This is also where I think rigor and joy get wrongly separated. The best academic environments I’ve built or led are places where children are working hard — genuinely stretching — and also genuinely enjoying it, because the work is meaningful rather than mechanical. A child struggling productively with a real problem, fully absorbed in figuring something out, is doing serious academic work. It doesn’t have to look like grim compliance to count as rigorous.
Grade-level standards and curriculum expectations matter, and I take them seriously — they exist because there’s real value in children having a coherent, developmentally sequenced body of knowledge and skill as they progress. But standards are a floor and a framework, not a ceiling. My responsibility as a leader is to make sure every classroom is meeting those expectations with fidelity, while also making sure teachers have room to extend, adapt, and bring their own expertise to how that happens.
Every classroom has children working across a real range, and I don’t think a single pace or a single task serves all of them well. Students who are ahead need genuine extension — more complex, more open-ended, more independent work, not simply more of the same task at a faster pace. Students who are struggling need to be identified early, understood clearly, and supported with real intervention, not just extra worksheets or lowered expectations. Closing a learning gap starts with understanding why it exists — is it a skill gap, a language gap, a developmental gap, a gap in prior instruction — because the response has to match the actual cause, not just the symptom.
Teachers are accountable for student learning, and that accountability is not optional. It means having clear expectations, real data, honest conversations, and genuine support — and it means school leaders maintaining clear standards for instructional quality, not looking away when something isn’t working. When a class isn’t progressing the way it should, my first question isn’t “whose fault is this,” it’s “what does this teacher need in order to get this right” — but that question comes with a real answer and real follow-through, not just sympathy.
I also think consistency across classrooms and grade levels is one of the most underrated markers of a genuinely strong academic program. Families should be able to trust that quality doesn’t depend on which teacher their child happens to get — that there’s a coherent standard being met across every classroom, even as individual teachers bring their own style and strengths to how they meet it. When I evaluate whether a school is academically strong, that consistency is one of the first things I look for — not because sameness is the goal, but because it’s evidence that excellence is systemic, not accidental.
None of this exists apart from a child’s wellbeing. A school does not have to choose between academic achievement and the whole child — the strongest schools understand that a child who feels safe, known, and genuinely engaged is the child who is actually capable of the deep learning we’re asking for. Ultimately, I know a program is academically strong not from a single data point, but from a pattern: children who can explain their thinking, teachers who know exactly where every student stands and why, and a school where high expectations mean genuine belief in what children are capable of — not pressure.
Literacy Along The Continuum
Foundational Literacy
Foundational literacy skills are the mechanics that make reading possible — and while they’re not the ultimate purpose of literacy, they are the non-negotiable groundwork everything else depends on. A child cannot access rich comprehension, literature, or ideas through text they cannot yet decode. My approach to foundational literacy takes this seriously: these skills are taught explicitly, systematically, and with real precision, not left to develop incidentally.
Phonological and phonemic awareness — the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate the sounds within spoken words, before print even enters the picture — is where this foundation starts. A child who can clap out syllables, blend sounds together, or identify the first sound in a word is building the auditory groundwork that phonics instruction will later attach to print. This work often begins well before formal reading instruction, through rhyme, song, oral language, and playful sound games, and I see it as inseparable from the broader oral language development that underlies all of literacy.
Phonics and decoding build directly on that foundation, teaching children the relationship between sounds and the letters and letter patterns that represent them. This needs to be taught in a clear, logical sequence — moving from simple, high-frequency patterns toward increasingly complex ones — rather than introduced haphazardly. Systematic doesn’t mean rigid or joyless; it means deliberate, so that children are given the instruction they need rather than being expected to infer patterns they have not yet been taught.
As decoding becomes more secure, word recognition and fluency develop — the ability to read words accurately, automatically, and with appropriate expression. Fluency matters because it’s the bridge between decoding and comprehension: a child who is still laboring to sound out every word has little cognitive space left over to think about what the text actually means. Building fluency requires real practice, ideally through texts that are appropriately matched to a child’s current decoding ability, so that practice builds confidence and accuracy rather than frustration.
Spelling and orthographic development run alongside reading, not behind it. Understanding spelling patterns — how sounds map onto letters, how words are built from meaningful parts, how English’s often-inconsistent spelling system actually has underlying logic — deepens a child’s decoding ability at the same time it builds their writing. I don’t treat spelling as a separate, disconnected subject; it’s a window into how well a child actually understands the code they’re learning to read and write.
None of this happens in isolation from the environment around it. Early literacy environments — print-rich classrooms, access to a wide range of texts, opportunities to see reading and writing modeled constantly, materials that invite children to practice emerging skills in authentic ways — matter enormously. A child surrounded by print, story, and purposeful reading and writing internalizes far more than explicit instruction alone can provide.
The trajectory across all of this is toward independence. Foundational skills are taught explicitly because they need to become increasingly automatic — the goal is a reader who no longer has to labor over decoding, freeing their attention for meaning, interpretation, and engagement with the text. When foundational literacy is taught well, decoding stops standing in the way of everything reading is actually for.
How Children Learn to Read
Learning to read is one of the most complex things children learn to do. It requires children to bring together language, knowledge, attention, memory, and increasingly automatic control of the written code. I believe the goal is not simply to produce children who can decode words accurately, but to develop readers who understand, question, connect, interpret, and eventually choose to read because reading gives them access to ideas, stories, information, and other people’s experiences.
Children do not all arrive at reading from the same starting point. Their oral language, vocabulary, experiences with books and print, knowledge of the world, languages, and previous educational experiences all shape how they approach written language. Understanding those differences matters because effective literacy teaching begins with knowing what a learner already understands and identifying what they need next.
At the beginning of the reading journey, children need a strong foundation in the relationship between spoken and written language. Oral language comes first: children build the vocabulary, sentence structures, listening skills, storytelling abilities, and background knowledge that written language will later represent through rich opportunities to talk, listen, and make meaning with others. They also need to become aware of sounds within words, understand how those sounds connect to letters and spelling patterns, and develop the ability to decode increasingly complex words. These skills require explicit, systematic teaching and meaningful opportunities to practice them. But foundational skills are a means to an end. The purpose of becoming an accurate and increasingly fluent reader is to gain access to meaning.
As children become more fluent, reading should increasingly free their attention for comprehension. They need opportunities to encounter rich vocabulary, background knowledge, varied text structures, literature, and ideas worth thinking about. Comprehension is not a single skill that can be taught independently of content; children understand what they read in part because of what they already know, the language they possess, and the connections they can make. Strong literacy instruction therefore builds both the ability to read words and the knowledge and language needed to understand them.
I also believe that reading development should never be reduced to a single pathway or timetable. Children develop at different rates, and a child who finds one aspect of reading difficult may be highly capable in another. The responsibility of the teacher is to identify the specific component that needs strengthening rather than assuming that a broad label such as “struggling reader” tells us enough. Precise understanding leads to more precise teaching.
Motivation and identity matter as well. Children need to experience themselves as readers, not simply as students completing reading tasks. Choice, access to compelling books, opportunities to talk about literature, seeing adults and peers read, and encountering texts that reflect both their own lives and worlds beyond them all contribute to developing a reading identity. A child who can decode successfully but believes that reading is something they are bad at has not yet experienced the full purpose of literacy.
This development continues as children move through Primary and beyond. The texts become more complex, vocabulary becomes increasingly academic, and students are expected to read not only stories but explanations, arguments, information, and disciplinary texts. The underlying goal remains the same: increasingly independent readers who can use reading to learn, think critically, communicate, and engage with the world around them.
Ultimately, I want literacy programs that understand both the science and the humanity of learning to read. Children need excellent instruction in the skills that make reading possible, but they also need rich language, knowledge, literature, conversation, curiosity, and a reason to care about what they are reading. The strongest literacy environments build readers who are not simply able to read, but who see themselves as people who read to know, to imagine, to question, and to understand.
Science of Reading & Research
I take research seriously, but I don’t treat it as a brand or a single program to adopt wholesale. “The Science of Reading” has become a useful shorthand for a real and important body of research — decades of evidence on how children learn to decode, build fluency, and develop comprehension — but the term itself has also become oversimplified in a lot of school marketing, reduced to whichever phonics kit a school happens to be selling. My interest is in the actual research, not the label.
What that research consistently shows is that reading is not a naturally acquired skill the way spoken language is — it has to be explicitly and systematically taught, particularly the code-based components: phonemic awareness, the relationship between sounds and letters, and decoding. Programs and approaches that leave this to incidental discovery or pure context-guessing put children, especially those without rich literacy exposure at home, at a real disadvantage. The evidence for the importance of explicit instruction in these foundational skills is substantial and well established.
At the same time, research is equally clear that decoding alone doesn’t produce a reader. Comprehension depends heavily on vocabulary, background knowledge, and language exposure — a child who can decode fluently but lacks the vocabulary or knowledge to understand what they’re reading is not yet a successful reader. So evidence-based practice, to me, means taking both halves of the research seriously: the systematic, explicit instruction in foundational skills, and the equally well-evidenced importance of building knowledge, vocabulary, and language through rich text and talk. Treating these as competing camps, as the public conversation often does, misrepresents what the actual research says.
My responsibility as a leader is to translate that research into something teachers can actually use, not just cite in a staff meeting. That means helping teachers understand why a particular instructional choice matters, not simply handing them a scripted program and asking for fidelity. A teacher who understands why explicit phonics instruction matters, or why background knowledge shapes comprehension, can make better in-the-moment decisions than one who is only following steps in a manual. This is also where school-level leadership matters: setting shared expectations for instruction, investing in real professional learning rather than one-off training days, observing classrooms with an understanding of what to look for, and creating regular opportunities for teachers to look at student evidence together and talk honestly about what’s working and what isn’t. Research becomes meaningful when it’s built into how a school actually operates, not left inside a single workshop.
I’m also cautious about treating any single program as a complete solution. Programs are tools, and a well-designed one can be genuinely valuable, but no program replaces a knowledgeable teacher who understands the research well enough to adapt instruction to the actual children in front of them — their language backgrounds, their prior knowledge, the specific gaps in their understanding. Research should inform a coherent, flexible approach to literacy instruction, not be outsourced entirely to a curriculum box.
Ultimately, I want the teachers I lead to understand the research behind their practice well enough to explain it — to a colleague, to a parent, to themselves in a moment of uncertainty about a struggling reader. That kind of genuine understanding, not just adherence to a program name, is what actually keeps instruction responsive, evidence-based, and effective over time.
Explicit Literacy in the Early Years
In the Early Years, literacy develops through a combination of rich language experiences and explicit instruction. Oral language, storytelling, songs, conversation, books, and play create the foundation, while explicit literacy instruction helps children develop the knowledge and skills needed for reading and writing. In my classrooms, these have never been competing priorities; they work together to support children's development as readers and writers.
Much of that work begins with oral language. Daily conversations, storytelling, dramatic play, songs, and shared reading experiences help children develop vocabulary, sentence structure, listening comprehension, and confidence as communicators. These experiences give children the language base they draw on later as readers and writers.
Early literacy also includes concepts of print and print awareness. Children learn that print carries meaning, that books have a front and back, that text follows predictable conventions, and that environmental print surrounds them in meaningful ways. These understandings form an important part of becoming a reader.
Phonological and phonemic awareness are a central part of early literacy instruction. Before children connect sounds to letters, they need opportunities to hear and work with the sounds within spoken language. Through rhyme, rhythm, songs, sound games, syllable work, blending, and segmenting activities, children develop the auditory foundation that supports later decoding, encoding, and spelling. These listening and sound-manipulation skills help children make sense of the relationships between spoken language and written language as formal reading instruction develops.
Beginning readers need explicit and systematic phonics instruction. Children learn sound-symbol relationships through a clear, cumulative sequence of instruction, with sounds, letters, spelling patterns, and word-building skills introduced in a deliberate progression that allows new learning to build on what has already been taught. Effective instruction often combines multiple pathways for learning: children may connect a sound to a picture, an action, a movement, a song, a keyword, or a visual cue before applying that knowledge in reading and writing. These approaches help make abstract concepts concrete and memorable for young learners.
Ongoing observation and assessment help teachers identify what students have mastered, where additional support is needed, and how instruction should be adjusted.
Explicit phonics instruction works best when it is woven naturally into the life of the classroom. I've taught these skills through songs, movement, games, storytelling, and playful practice. Children might learn a sound through a story, connect it to a picture or action, associate it with a movement, build words with magnetic letters, hunt for it in shared reading, and then apply it in their own reading and writing. Explicit instruction becomes more powerful when children encounter new learning in multiple meaningful ways.
Over the years, I have worked with a variety of structured literacy and phonics approaches. What matters most to me is not loyalty to a particular program but a strong understanding of the principles behind effective instruction: a clear sequence, explicit teaching, regular review, opportunities for application, and ongoing assessment of student progress. What matters most is whether a teacher understands the progression of literacy development deeply enough to provide instruction that is responsive, systematic, and grounded in how children actually learn to read and write. When teachers understand those principles deeply, they can implement their school's chosen approach with confidence while remaining responsive to the children in front of them.
Writing Development
Writing is one of the most complex things we ask children to do. It requires them to generate ideas, organize their thinking, choose language deliberately, apply increasingly sophisticated knowledge of spelling and grammar, and hold all of that in mind while communicating with an audience. Because so many skills develop simultaneously, writing develops over time — it moves through recognizable stages, and my approach depends on understanding exactly where a child is in that progression. A four-year-old’s scribbles that represent a story, a six-year-old’s writing of “Elfents run fast,” and a ten-year-old’s structured persuasive essay are not different levels of the same skill so much as different points in an unfolding capacity. Recognizing that progression changes how I think about instruction at every stage.
Emergent writing — the earliest marks, letter-like symbols, and invented spelling young children produce — is genuine writing, not a lesser precursor to it. A child drawing a picture and telling the story it represents, or writing a string of letters and “reading” back their own message, is already doing the fundamental work of writing: representing meaning in a durable form for someone else to encounter. I want teachers to value and build on that emergent stage rather than rushing past it toward conventional spelling and complete sentences before a child is ready. As children begin to connect sounds to letters, words to sentences, and sentences to larger pieces of text, their writing becomes increasingly conventional — but the underlying goal never changes: communicating an idea to someone else.
As writing develops, children move toward increasingly sophisticated composition — first constructing simple sentences, then organizing several sentences into a coherent sequence, then structuring longer pieces with a clear beginning, middle, and end, and eventually managing the more complex demands of paragraphing, transitions, and sustained argument or narrative. This progression is not identical for every child, but it is real, and strong writing instruction moves deliberately through it rather than expecting a young writer to produce polished prose before they have developed the building blocks underneath it. Within that progression, several specific craft elements need explicit attention: sentence construction and the increasingly varied ways ideas can be combined; vocabulary that grows more precise and deliberate; organization that helps a reader follow an idea clearly; and voice — the sense that a piece of writing sounds like a particular person with something genuine to say. These elements do not emerge automatically through exposure alone; they strengthen through direct instruction, practice, feedback, and reflection.
Good writing instruction balances correctness with expression. Conventions matter because they help a writer communicate clearly, but writing is more than the avoidance of mistakes. Children need opportunities to develop voice, experiment with language, make choices as authors, and discover that writing can be a tool for creativity as well as communication. Technical accuracy and personal expression are not competing priorities — the strongest writing instruction develops both together, just as rigor and joy belong together in every other part of a strong literacy program.
I think about creative and academic writing as two branches of the same underlying capacity, not separate subjects. The skills that make a personal narrative vivid — sensory detail, structure, and voice — overlap substantially with what makes an academic explanation clear and well organized. Children benefit from working across both throughout their development because each strengthens capacities the other draws on.
As children move from Primary into Middle School, the demands on writing grow considerably more complex — longer pieces, more abstract topics, evidence-based argument, and the conventions of specific academic disciplines. This is not a different kind of writing so much as the same developmental trajectory continuing to extend, and I think schools do students a disservice when writing instruction becomes markedly less intentional in the later grades, as though the foundational work is finished by the end of Primary and older students should simply develop more sophisticated writing on their own.
I believe strongly that writing develops most powerfully when children write for real audiences and real purposes, not just for a teacher’s red pen. Publishing student work — whether that is a class book, a piece shared aloud, a school publication, or writing that reaches an audience beyond the classroom — changes how seriously a child takes the process because craft suddenly matters for a genuine reason: someone else is actually going to read it. In my experience, authentic audiences are among the strongest motivators in the writing process, encouraging children to take greater pride, care, and ownership in their work at every stage of development.
Student Voice, Writing Workshop & Authentic Authorship
I want writing classrooms to be noisy with ideas. Students should be generating ideas, sharing them aloud, sketching possibilities, talking through their thinking, and building energy before they ever begin drafting. The best writing classrooms are active places where students see themselves as authors from the very beginning and understand that their ideas, experiences, and perspectives have value. While I have experience with workshop-based approaches, including many of the practices associated with the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, what matters most to me is creating classrooms where students develop voice, agency, and genuine ownership of their writing.
A mini-lesson, in my experience, should be genuinely mini. Sometimes it begins with a sixty-second visualization. Sometimes students quickly sketch an image before it disappears from their minds. Sometimes we use a quick movement or focus-building activity to activate thinking and prepare students to engage creatively with language. The goal is to create momentum and engagement before moving into the craft work itself. Students write better when they have something they genuinely want to say.
One of the most powerful teaching tools in a workshop classroom is student work itself. I regularly stop to share a student’s sentence, a thoughtful observation, a strong lead, an effective use of dialogue, or a creative vocabulary choice. When students see authentic examples coming from their classmates, the teaching becomes immediate and real. They learn a craft move while simultaneously seeing what is possible in their own writing.
Morning journals are often where that writing begins. I see journals not as isolated warm-up activities but as a place where students collect ideas, observations, memories, questions, and experiences. Those entries frequently become the foundation for later pieces of writing. When students move into a narrative, persuasive, informational, or poetry unit, they already have a bank of authentic material to draw from rather than facing a blank page.
Conferring is at the heart of the workshop model. Sitting beside a student allows me to understand exactly where they are as a writer and what they need next. Sometimes the teaching point is about punctuation or paragraphing. Sometimes it is helping a student elaborate on an idea, strengthen a lead, or recognize a powerful moment hidden within their draft. A conference provides targeted instruction that is responsive to the individual writer rather than aimed at a hypothetical average student.
I value units of study because they provide time for depth. Students spend sustained periods working within a genre or craft focus, revising and refining their work over time rather than producing a single piece and immediately moving on. Real growth happens when students have opportunities to revisit, rethink, revise, and strengthen their writing.
Strong literacy instruction draws from research, professional learning, classroom experience, and careful observation of students. Effective teachers understand multiple approaches and make thoughtful decisions about which practices best support their learners. What matters most is whether an approach helps students think deeply, write authentically, receive meaningful feedback, and grow as readers and writers.
What I value most about workshop teaching is that it creates a classroom where ideas matter. Students learn that writing is not simply an academic exercise; it is a way of thinking, creating, communicating, and making meaning. When that happens, the technical skills we teach become tools in service of something larger: giving students the confidence and ability to share their voices with the world.
Literacy Beyond Primary: Middle School & Content-area Literacy
Literacy development does not end once a child can decode fluently and comprehend a Primary-level text. As students move into Middle School, the literacy demands placed on them become increasingly complex and require continued, intentional support. The expectation that students will use reading and writing to learn, analyze, evaluate, and communicate across multiple disciplines means that literacy remains a central part of their educational experience long after the foundational stages of reading have been established.
Middle School students encounter texts that are denser, more abstract, and structurally more demanding than those they experienced in Primary School — longer arguments, specialized vocabulary tied to specific disciplines, and sentence structures designed to communicate increasingly complex ideas. These increasing demands can challenge students across a wide range of reading profiles because the work has shifted beyond decoding toward processing, interpreting, and making meaning from more sophisticated texts.
Writing develops in a parallel way. It is no longer confined to language arts classes — students are expected to explain their reasoning, interpret evidence, construct arguments, and communicate complex ideas across every subject they take. Each of those is a genuine writing task with its own demands, and a school that values strong literacy development recognizes that writing growth happens across the curriculum, not only within a single department.
That points to something important about content-area literacy: every subject has its own ways of reading, writing, thinking, and communicating knowledge. Historians evaluate sources differently from scientists. Scientists communicate evidence differently from mathematicians. Genuine literacy support at this level means helping teachers understand the specific literacy demands of their disciplines while giving students the tools to navigate them successfully.
Alongside this, students are increasingly expected to read critically, not simply accurately — evaluating evidence, noticing bias, weighing sources against one another, and constructing arguments rather than merely reporting information. This is where literacy overlaps directly with critical thinking, and it requires deliberate teaching and regular opportunities for practice. These capacities develop through careful instruction, discussion, and engagement with increasingly complex texts and ideas.
Schools also need systems that continue to support students whose foundational literacy skills are still developing as they enter Middle School. A student who enters Grade 6 still developing decoding or fluency skills benefits from continued, targeted instruction alongside access to age-appropriate content. Identifying and supporting these students requires the same thoughtful, evidence-informed approach that effective schools apply in the earlier years.
Reading identity is also genuinely at risk during these years. Many students who saw themselves as readers in Primary quietly stop identifying that way in early adolescence, even when their literacy skills remain strong. Academic demands increase just as independent reading time often shrinks, and choice and personal relevance can become casualties of a busier, more subject-divided schedule. Protecting reading identity through adolescence requires the same deliberate attention that building it required in the first place; it does not sustain itself automatically.
None of this can be the responsibility of the language department alone. Subject teachers need support in understanding their role in literacy development — not as an additional initiative, but as an integral part of teaching their discipline well. When a school approaches literacy as a shared responsibility, students experience a coherent and reinforced approach to reading, writing, discussion, and critical thinking across every class they take. In my experience, that coherence is one of the strongest predictors of long-term literacy success, because students encounter consistent expectations and support wherever learning takes place.
Multilingual & Additional Language Learners
Multilingualism is a powerful linguistic asset. Learning to read and write across more than one language is complex work, but the underlying cognitive processes involved in literacy development transfer across languages in important ways. A strong literacy foundation in one language can support literacy development in another.
Children bring existing literacy knowledge and experiences with them when they learn and use additional languages. Understanding how stories are structured, how texts are organized, how to make predictions, draw inferences, identify key ideas, and construct meaning from text are literacy skills that support learning across languages, even when vocabulary differs from one language to another.
Increasingly, multilingualism and additional language development overlap. Many children are growing up using multiple languages while simultaneously developing proficiency in another language used at school or in the wider community. A child may speak one language at home, another with extended family, and learn through a third language in school. These experiences are often interconnected, and effective educators understand how language development, literacy development, culture, and identity influence one another.
Supporting learners who are developing proficiency in an additional language requires deliberate and responsive teaching. Effective practice includes the use of visuals, gestures, pictures, modeling, non-verbal communication, clear and purposeful language, strategic questioning, opportunities for collaborative learning, and frequent checks for understanding. Multisensory approaches, discussion, play, storytelling, and meaningful interactions help learners develop both language and literacy in authentic contexts. Strong teachers build on students’ existing strengths and knowledge while providing the scaffolds needed to access increasingly complex learning.
A child's home languages, cultural knowledge, and prior experiences are valuable resources for learning. These assets provide connections that help students make meaning, build vocabulary, develop comprehension, and express increasingly sophisticated ideas across languages. When educators intentionally draw upon those strengths, students are better positioned to engage deeply with literacy and learning.
This work evolves across a child's educational journey. In the Early Years, the focus is often on oral language, vocabulary development, storytelling, and communication. In Primary Years, students develop increasing independence as readers and writers while expanding academic vocabulary and language structures. In later years, learners engage with increasingly specialized disciplinary language, including the vocabulary, text structures, and communication demands of different subject areas.
Ultimately, language development is closely connected to identity, belonging, and confidence. Students who see their languages, cultures, and experiences reflected and valued in their learning environments are more likely to develop confidence as communicators, readers, writers, and learners. That confidence supports both academic success and meaningful participation in an increasingly interconnected world.
Literacy Assessment & Intervention
Literacy assessment plays an essential role in understanding a student’s literacy development and identifying the support, instruction, and opportunities that will help them continue to grow. A score can provide useful information, but the richest insights often come from understanding the knowledge, skills, and processes that sit beneath the result.
Teachers learn a tremendous amount by observing how a young child interacts with literacy: how they engage with books, use books, navigate books, and demonstrate their understanding of print concepts, whether they understand that print carries meaning and moves left to right, how they retell a story, what their emergent writing reveals about their understanding of sounds and letters, and how they play with the sounds of language. This kind of close, literacy-specific observation can provide some of the richest evidence available at this stage of development, and a skilled teacher can identify a genuine concern from it long before any formal measure would surface one.
As children become more proficient readers, tools such as running records, oral reading assessments, and reading conferences can provide valuable insight beyond simple measures of accuracy. Watching whether a child self-corrects, what strategies they reach for when they encounter an unfamiliar word, whether their fluency holds up under more demanding text, and whether they can monitor their own comprehension and notice when something is not making sense often provides some of the most useful diagnostic information available to teachers. Two students can produce the exact same score on a reading assessment and need completely different instruction, because the score does not tell you which of these underlying processes is the area requiring support.
Identifying a specific literacy need requires precision. A student may require support because of weak phonemic awareness, inconsistent decoding, slow or effortful fluency, developing vocabulary knowledge, challenges with reading comprehension, disorganized writing structure, or transcription challenges such as handwriting or spelling that consume so much cognitive effort that composing ideas becomes difficult. Each of these requires a different instructional response, and precise understanding of which factor is contributing to the challenge is what makes the difference between an intervention that is well matched to the learner and one that is not.
Successful intervention depends on understanding precisely what support a student requires. Effective support begins with understanding the particular literacy skill, knowledge, or process that requires further development. A decoding challenge calls for explicit, systematic phonics instruction. A fluency challenge calls for supported, repeated practice with appropriately matched text. A reading comprehension challenge may require additional support with vocabulary, language development, background knowledge, or access to text and content. Multilingual learners may also require consideration of language proficiency and academic language development when planning support. The more precisely a need is understood, the more effectively instruction and intervention can be designed.
Effective intervention is measured through student growth and progress over time. Progress monitoring helps schools determine whether students are making measurable gains toward the specific skills that have been identified. If progress is limited, educators can examine the evidence, reconsider their assumptions, and adjust instruction, intervention, or levels of support accordingly. Ongoing review ensures that support remains responsive to the learner and grounded in evidence rather than routine.
None of this works in isolation. Classroom teachers, literacy specialists, learning support staff, and interventionists need to operate from shared evidence and shared goals. The strongest literacy support systems are collaborative and coordinated, with everyone working from a common understanding of a student's strengths, needs, and next steps. When professionals regularly share information and align their efforts, support becomes more coherent and effective for the learner.
Ultimately, literacy development involves a range of interconnected skills that grow and strengthen over time. Students may require support in different areas and at different points in their literacy journey. The goal is to understand learners precisely enough to provide the instruction, intervention, and opportunities that will help them continue to grow as confident, capable, and increasingly independent readers and writers.
Creative Literacy
Creative literacy gives children opportunities to use language as something they create, shape, perform, and share. Creative literacy expands the ways children engage with language through storytelling, discussion, performance, dramatic play, creative writing, and presentation. These experiences allow children to explore ideas, express themselves, and develop a deeper understanding of how language works across different contexts and purposes.
Storytelling is a powerful part of literacy development. Through storytelling, children learn to organize ideas, sequence events, develop characters, explore perspective, and communicate meaning to an audience. Through storytelling, drama, puppetry, role-play, readers' theatre, and performance, children develop vocabulary, narrative understanding, communication skills, and confidence while exploring how stories are constructed, interpreted, adapted, and communicated through different forms. Children may retell a story from a different perspective, transform a text into a performance, adapt a familiar narrative, or create entirely new stories of their own.
Speaking and listening also play a central role in literacy development. Discussion, presentation, collaborative dialogue, storytelling, and performance give children opportunities to organize their thinking, communicate ideas clearly, respond to different perspectives, and develop confidence in expressing their own ideas and opinions. Classrooms that value student voice create regular opportunities for children to explain, question, discuss, present, and reflect, helping them develop confidence and independence as communicators.
Creative writing provides a space for children to experiment with ideas, develop their individual voice, and communicate for a range of audiences and purposes. Whether writing stories, poetry, songs, scripts, graphic narratives, or other original pieces, children learn how writers make deliberate choices about vocabulary, structure, tone, style, and form. Creative literacy also provides opportunities for children to combine language with images, performance, sound, and other forms of communication, expanding the ways they express, develop, and share their ideas. These experiences help children understand how writers and creators use language deliberately to communicate ideas, evoke emotion, inform, persuade, and entertain.
Creative literacy is strengthened when children have authentic opportunities to share their work with others. Performances, readings, class books, anthologies, exhibitions, publications, and showcases provide meaningful contexts for communication and encourage children to see themselves as authors, storytellers, performers, and creators of original work. When children know their work will be read, heard, viewed, or experienced by others, they often approach the process with greater purpose, ownership, and attention to detail.
Building a Reading Culture
A strong reading culture is built intentionally. It can be seen in the everyday life of a school: the conversations children have about books, the recommendations they make to one another, the visibility of reading across classrooms and shared spaces, and the extent to which books become part of the wider culture of the community. Developing that culture requires more than literacy instruction alone. It requires creating an environment where reading is visible, valued, and actively celebrated.
Throughout my career, one of my favorite areas of school development has been building literacy communities that extend beyond individual classrooms. This has included transforming libraries into active literacy hubs, creating spaces where reading, storytelling, student publishing, book discussion, and community events become part of daily school life. A well-designed library serves as far more than a collection of books; it becomes a gathering place for readers and a visible expression of a school's commitment to literacy.
Schoolwide initiatives play an important role in strengthening that culture. Visiting-author programs, International Book Week, literacy celebrations, reading challenges, book clubs, community reading events, and cross-grade literacy projects create shared experiences that bring students, staff, and families together around books and storytelling. These experiences help children see reading as something that exists beyond individual lessons and beyond the classroom itself.
Choice also matters. Children are more likely to develop lasting reading habits when they have access to a wide range of high-quality texts and opportunities to discover books that genuinely interest them. Classrooms and libraries should offer windows into unfamiliar experiences as well as mirrors that reflect children's own lives, languages, and identities. When students are encouraged to recommend books, discuss what they are reading, and contribute to reading communities, they begin to see themselves as readers rather than simply students completing reading tasks.
Families are important partners in this work. Reading culture grows strongest when schools and families work together to create opportunities for reading beyond the school day. Conversations about books, shared reading experiences, family literacy events, and visible reading role models all contribute to children's understanding that reading is a meaningful part of everyday life.
The most successful reading cultures are sustained collectively. Teachers, librarians, school leaders, students, and families each contribute to an environment where books, stories, and ideas are shared, discussed, and celebrated. When that culture is established, reading becomes more than a curriculum area—it becomes part of the identity of the school community.
Programs & Enrichment
Why Programs Matter
Some of the most meaningful learning experiences occur when students have opportunities to explore interests, develop new skills, and engage with learning in different ways. I built the Enrichment Department at my school on that conviction, starting during Covid with a small Early Years and Early Primary offering and one clear question: are students actually more engaged because of this? Participation climbed from around 10% of the school to 75% within a few years as the program expanded across the school, eventually serving students from Early Years through Middle School. That growth provided clear evidence that the program was meeting a genuine need within the school community.
I have seen students discover strengths, interests, and confidence through experiences that complemented and extended their learning. Building the department also taught me a great deal about leading adults — recruiting instructors, coaching staff, managing logistics, and creating systems that could grow while maintaining quality.
Building Programs from the Ground Up & Program Sustainability
I have learned that no two schools want or need the same program, so before building anything, I spend time understanding a school's culture — talking with staff, listening to what students gravitate toward, and asking families about the opportunities and experiences that interest them most. Building the Enrichment Department was not something I did alone in an office; it grew because teachers brought their own ideas and expertise into the process, and families shared what their children were genuinely excited about beyond the regular school day.
I started small with a handful of Early Years and Early Primary classes, monitored participation carefully, and expanded only when both demand and engagement supported growth. I tracked participation, waitlists, parent feedback, and repeat enrollment closely because sustainable growth depends on families finding real value in what is being offered. By the time I left, that collaborative approach had grown into a team of up to 40 instructors and specialists serving three-quarters of a 700-student population across Early Years, Primary, and Middle School.
Long-term sustainability is an important part of program development. Strong programs become part of a school's culture and continue to thrive as leadership and staffing evolve over time. For that reason, I have always focused on developing systems, documenting successful practices, distributing leadership, and creating structures that allow programs to continue growing beyond their initial launch. The goal is not simply to create a successful initiative, but to build something that continues to create value for students, families, and schools for years to come.
Family Partnership & Community Engagement
I believe some of the strongest enrichment experiences connect directly to families as partners in learning. Throughout my work, I have developed events designed to bring parents into their children's learning experiences in meaningful ways. One initiative I am particularly proud of was a series of family evenings, including an "Enchanted Evening" library event centered on read-aloud, which gave parents a direct experience with the learning we hoped to encourage at home.
I ran several family events throughout the year, each connected to a different aspect of children's learning and development. These events served both as community-building opportunities and as ways to deepen families' understanding of how children learn. I have consistently found that when families participate in learning alongside their children, they are more likely to continue those conversations and experiences beyond school, strengthening the connection between home and school life.
Experiential & Interdisciplinary Learning
I believe children learn deeply when they actively build, investigate, create, perform, and experience concepts for themselves. I have developed programs centered on outdoor and nature-based learning, forest school, beach-based programming, and hands-on experiences in drama, visual arts, and music.
I have always viewed the arts as a form of experiential learning rather than a separate category of school life. A child building a theatre set, composing a piece of music, creating a sculpture, or investigating a tide pool is engaging in processes of inquiry, creativity, problem-solving, reflection, and communication. Some of the most engaged learners I have worked with discovered new strengths through opportunities to build, perform, explore, and create.
These experiences are also naturally interdisciplinary. Meaningful learning often draws on knowledge and skills from multiple disciplines simultaneously. A maker project might require engineering and mathematics to design a solution, literacy skills to communicate ideas, artistic thinking to develop visual identity, and collaboration skills to work effectively with others. Bringing disciplines together creates richer learning experiences and reflects the way problems are encountered and solved beyond school.
Creativity, Innovation & Entrepreneurship
I want students to leave a program having created something meaningful. In my entrepreneurship and maker programs, students did not simply generate ideas; they developed products, built prototypes, tested solutions, and presented their work to authentic audiences.
Giving students opportunities to present, refine, and advocate for their ideas develops far more than entrepreneurial skills. It strengthens communication, resilience, creativity, and confidence. I have watched students who were initially hesitant become strong advocates for their own ideas once they had invested time and effort into creating something they genuinely cared about.
This mindset extends beyond enrichment programming. Whenever possible, I look for opportunities to incorporate authentic problem-solving, innovation, and creative thinking into the broader learning experience, helping students see themselves as creators, designers, contributors, and problem-solvers.
Case Studies
Case Study 1: Building the Enrichment & Experiential Learning Department
The Challenge
I was serving as Early Years EAL Lead and Kindergarten Teacher when COVID heavily restricted school attendance in March 2020. Almost immediately, I became concerned about the impact this would have on students’ social wellbeing and sense of connection, particularly for younger children.
As I spoke with families and observed students, I saw a need for additional opportunities for children to connect with peers, explore interests, and engage in meaningful learning experiences outside of the regular school day. I approached school leadership about piloting a small number of enrichment clubs for Early Years and Primary students.
Using parent questionnaires and family feedback, I identified areas of interest and organized a small number of groups, which I initially taught myself with the support of an assistant.
The Actions
I started small, using student interest, family feedback, enrollment data, budget analysis, and vendor capacity to guide decisions about programming. Throughout the process, I used participation patterns, community feedback, operational considerations, and student engagement data to inform decisions about growth and future offerings.
The initial pilot generated strong interest from families, and the following school year I became Head of Enrichment & Experiential Learning.
In that role, I was responsible for growing the program strategically across Early Years, Primary, and Middle School. I recruited instructors and specialists, developed partnerships with external providers, managed staffing and budgets, coordinated scheduling and operations, and expanded offerings to include outdoor education, beach and nature-based learning, entrepreneurship, innovation, maker education, technology, arts programs, sports, and interdisciplinary enrichment opportunities.
Throughout the department’s growth, I continued to use community feedback and participation data to guide decision-making, ensuring that new offerings reflected both student interests and the school’s educational priorities.
The Results
Over time, the program grew from a small pilot serving a limited number of Early Years and Early Primary students into a school-wide enrichment department serving students from Early Years through Middle School.
By the time I left the role in 2023, the department included up to 40 instructors and specialists and was serving approximately 75% of the students within the Early Years, Primary, and Middle School divisions. The program had become an established and valued part of the school community, providing students with opportunities to develop interests, build friendships, and strengthen skills beyond the classroom.
What began as a response to a specific challenge during COVID evolved into a sustainable department that continued to support students and families long after the immediate crisis had passed.
Lessons Learned
This experience reinforced the importance of identifying a community need, developing a responsive solution, collaborating with stakeholders, and using evidence to guide continuous improvement.
It also taught me that meaningful initiatives do not always begin with a large strategic plan. Sometimes they begin by identifying a need, testing a small idea, gathering feedback, and allowing evidence to guide growth.
What started as an effort to support children’s social wellbeing during COVID became a sustainable program that continued to serve the school community long after the immediate crisis had passed.
Case Study 2: Building Language, Confidence, and Community in an Emergent Language Classroom
The Challenge
In one of my first years of teaching, I was assigned a first-grade class that was very different from the other classes in the school.
Most first-grade teachers had a mixture of students with varying levels of English proficiency. In my class, however, approximately 90% of the students arrived with no English. Many did not yet know the English alphabet, could not understand classroom instructions, and could not communicate in English. Only three students had moderate or fluent English skills.
At the same time, I was still responsible for teaching the same curriculum and academic content as the other first-grade classes.
This was early in my career. I had a degree in Elementary Education and had learned about EAL during my teacher preparation program, but I was not trained as an EAL specialist and was not prepared for a class with this level of language need. I had not yet completed my master’s degree in Literacy. I had no teaching assistant, limited guidance, and very few resources available to support a classroom where almost every student was beginning English from the very beginning.
My challenge was not simply teaching English. My challenge was figuring out how to teach children every subject in English when many of them did not yet know the language, the vocabulary, or even the alphabet. Looking back nearly twenty years later, it is easy to forget how different the educational landscape was. There were far fewer resources available to teachers, and many of the supports and technologies available today simply did not exist yet.
The Actions
I spent a great deal of time thinking about where to begin.
What I realized was that before students could take academic risks in English, they needed a way to participate successfully. They needed a routine that felt safe, predictable, and meaningful.
During the first weeks of school, I began developing a morning routine that included a simple question: “How do you feel today?”
I created a chart with a small number of emotions represented through pictures. Students would point to an image, I would model the vocabulary, and they would repeat it. Initially, responses were limited to single words. Gradually we expanded into simple sentences such as, “I feel happy,” or “I feel excited because I am at school.”
Over time the chart expanded. Five emotions became seven. Seven became ten. By the end of the year, students were comfortably working with a much broader range of emotional vocabulary and increasingly complex language structures.
What surprised me most was how deeply students connected with the routine.
“How do you feel today?” became one of the most anticipated parts of our day. Sometimes students wanted to continue the discussion long after the official morning meeting had ended. They wanted to talk, listen, share experiences, and connect with one another.
What began as a language-development activity evolved into something much larger.
Students became more willing to speak English because they were talking about something meaningful to them. They became more comfortable taking risks. They developed stronger relationships with one another. I learned important things about their lives, families, and experiences that helped me better support them as both a teacher and a trusted adult.
One student consistently told me he felt sad but struggled to explain why. Over time, I learned that a prolonged separation from his father due to work commitments was weighing heavily on him. Understanding that changed the way I supported him at school and led to meaningful conversations with the family about how to strengthen connection and support his wellbeing.
The routine helped me understand my students beyond their language abilities while simultaneously helping them develop those language abilities.
The Results
By the end of the school year, students who had arrived with no English were successfully learning and communicating in English throughout the school day.
They were speaking in complete sentences, participating in discussions, expressing their ideas, and engaging confidently with academic content.
Their academic performance was comparable to, and in some cases exceeded, that of other classes. Reading became a particular strength, and students developed a genuine enthusiasm for reading in English.
The growth extended beyond academics. Students developed confidence, stronger peer relationships, greater classroom participation, and a willingness to take risks with language.
Families also reported significant growth in both confidence and communication. Many sought additional English learning opportunities outside school because they could see how much progress their children were making.
Lessons Learned
This experience taught me that language acquisition is never only about language.
Children learn best when they feel safe, understood, and connected. Before students can fully engage academically, they need opportunities to participate successfully, take risks, build relationships, and feel that their voices matter.
It also reinforced something that has stayed with me throughout my career: when students cannot yet access the curriculum, our responsibility is to find an entry point that resonates with them. Once children are engaged, feel understood, and begin experiencing success, learning can grow from there.
In this case, a simple daily conversation about feelings became the foundation for language development, confidence, relationship-building, classroom participation, and academic growth. It reminded me that some of the most effective educational strategies begin with understanding the children sitting in front of us and building from there.
Case Study 3: Building a Culture of Reading & Strengthening Classroom Libraries as Principal
The Challenge
When I became Principal of Early Years and Early Primary, I noticed that classroom libraries varied significantly from room to room. Some classrooms had strong collections with a wide variety of genres and reading levels, while others had fewer books or collections that had developed unevenly over time. The issue was not simply the number of books available. Reading experiences and access to books were not consistent across classrooms.
As a classroom teacher, I had seen firsthand how regular access to books and well-established reading routines increased engagement, independence, reading stamina, and enthusiasm for reading. As a principal, I wanted to help build that same culture across Early Years and Early Primary classrooms.
The Actions
I began by reviewing classroom libraries throughout the division and working closely with teachers and the school librarian to strengthen classroom collections.
Together, we examined genres, reading levels, student interests, curriculum connections, and overall accessibility. The librarian played an important role in helping teachers curate collections, recommend titles, support units of study, and ensure students had access to a broader range of high-quality literature. The goal was to create classroom libraries that students genuinely wanted to use.
At the same time, I introduced teachers to literacy practices I had developed and refined in my own classrooms over the years.
One of the most important practices was ensuring that books were always immediately available to students. In my Kindergarten, Grade 1, and Grade 2 classrooms, every student had a book on their desk. If they finished an assignment, completed independent work, arrived before others, returned from a specialist class, or found themselves with a few extra minutes before the next lesson began, they opened their book and continued reading.
I supported teachers in establishing similar routines so that reading became a natural choice during appropriate independent moments throughout the day.
I also shared strategies for building excitement around books. When introducing new titles, I often presented them in ways that sparked curiosity and encouraged students to seek them out independently. Students became excited about authors, series, characters, and genres, and frequently requested books before they even reached classroom shelves.
Students were also encouraged to develop ownership of their reading lives. At the beginning of the school year, students created personal bookmarks that stayed with them throughout the year. For older students, optional book response cards provided opportunities to share recommendations and reflect on books they enjoyed.
In Early Years classrooms, books were integrated throughout learning environments, including centers, classroom libraries, and book nooks. Books remained accessible during transitions, independent exploration, and quieter moments of the day, creating multiple opportunities for children to engage with reading.
The Results
Over time, reading became increasingly embedded into the culture of the division.
Students began reaching for books automatically during transition times, after completing assignments, while waiting for classmates, and during independent learning periods. Rather than asking teachers what they should do next, many students instinctively opened a book, continued reading, or selected a new title from the classroom library.
Teachers reported stronger engagement with classroom libraries and increased student enthusiasm for reading. Students regularly discussed books with one another, explored new genres, discovered favorite authors, and developed stronger reading identities.
Most importantly, reading became something students chose to do. It became part of the rhythm of the school day rather than an activity reserved for a particular lesson.
Lessons Learned
This experience reinforced my belief that culture is built through small, consistent routines repeated over time.
Creating strong readers requires access to books, consistent routines, and opportunities to engage with reading throughout the school day.
I also learned that some of the most meaningful school improvements come from scaling practices that have already proven successful in classrooms. What began as routines I developed as a teacher became shared practices that helped strengthen reading culture across Early Years and Early Primary.
When students are consistently surrounded by engaging books, supportive adults, and meaningful opportunities to read, reading becomes a natural part of daily life and school culture.
Harvard CSML & Project Zero
Harvard CSML
Leading People
Leading People sharpened how I think about a truth I had already come to believe: leadership is not confined to formal titles. It reveals itself through actions, relationships, influence, and example, often long before a position or job description reflects it. This pattern extends far beyond education. In every field, there are people quietly leading, supporting others, solving problems, and strengthening their communities well before anyone officially recognizes them as leaders.
One of the most important responsibilities of leadership is learning to recognize potential in others and helping people see strengths they may not yet see in themselves. Many exceptional leaders did not begin their careers aspiring to a particular title. They grew into leadership because someone noticed their abilities, invested in their growth, offered encouragement, provided mentorship, and created opportunities for them to take on new challenges and responsibilities.
For that reason, succession planning and professional growth have always been deeply important to me. Strong schools do not wait until a leadership position becomes vacant and then begin searching for someone to fill it. They actively cultivate future leaders throughout the organization, creating pathways for growth, providing meaningful opportunities to contribute, and gradually increasing responsibility over time. Leadership development is most effective when it begins long before a title is needed.
Investing in people in this way strengthens both the individual and the institution. It builds confidence, develops capacity, and creates a culture in which leadership is viewed not as a position reserved for a select few, but as a shared responsibility that can emerge at every level of a school. When schools consistently identify, support, and develop talented people, they create a strong foundation for continuity, growth, and long-term success.
Harvard CSML
Learning Leading
Sustainable excellence in a school comes from the entire community working together. Good practice needs to be shared, cultivated, and handed down from one educator to another, from one classroom to the next, from one department to a neighboring one, so that it takes root and spreads rather than remaining isolated wherever it first emerged. A strong instructional idea in a Grade 2 classroom should be able to find its way into Grade 3, into the specialist team, into a completely different section of the school, because the structures exist to support that transfer and make collective learning possible.
Leading Learning strengthened my understanding of exactly that principle. Learning is strengthened when teachers, specialists, divisional leaders, and administrators work together toward common goals while contributing their own expertise and perspectives. Strong schools create the conditions that allow ideas, knowledge, and effective practice to move throughout the organization. Shared planning time, cross-departmental collaboration, professional learning communities, coaching, and structured opportunities for reflection all help ensure that successful practices become part of the school’s collective capacity rather than remaining with individual educators.
The standard of teaching within a school is influenced by the quality of the individuals within it, but long-term success depends upon something larger than any one person. Schools become stronger when knowledge is shared, when expertise is distributed, and when people actively contribute to one another’s growth. Excellence becomes sustainable when good practice can move freely through the community, continuing to grow and evolve as new people join, experienced educators move on, and the school continues learning together
Harvard CSML
Leading Strategy
One of the most important ideas I took away from Leading Strategy is that good strategy begins with understanding reality.
In education, it is easy to become attached to ideas, initiatives, and long-term plans. Before deciding where a school should go, however, leaders need a clear understanding of where the school actually is.
Who are the students sitting in our classrooms today? What are families asking for? What are teachers doing exceptionally well? Where are opportunities for growth? What traditions are central to the school’s identity? What resources are available? What opportunities exist within the community? What challenges need to be addressed?
I have found that many strategic mistakes happen when leaders begin with solutions before fully understanding the environment they are trying to improve.
The course reinforced my belief that strategy is not about creating ambitious documents. It is about asking the right questions and developing a deep understanding of the people and community the school serves. Once that understanding exists, priorities become much clearer.
It also challenged me to think about strategy as a process of making choices. Every school has more opportunities than it has time, people, or resources. Leadership requires deciding not only what a school will pursue, but what it will intentionally choose not to pursue. Those decisions require clarity, discipline, and a strong understanding of mission.
For me, the strongest strategic plans are not the most complicated. They are the ones that are deeply rooted in the reality of the school community and provide a clear path forward for the people who are actually living and working within it every day.
Harvard CSML
Leading Change
Leading Change challenged me to think differently about why some change efforts succeed while others struggle.
One of the most important lessons for me was that resistance to change is not always resistance to the idea itself. Often, people are protecting something they value, questioning whether they have been heard, or trying to understand how a proposed change will affect their students, colleagues, or responsibilities. When viewed through that lens, resistance becomes valuable information rather than something to overcome.
The course reinforced my belief that listening is one of the most important leadership skills during periods of change. People are far more likely to support new initiatives when they understand the purpose behind them, have opportunities to contribute, and feel that their perspectives have been considered. Meaningful change is rarely something that happens to a community. It is something that happens with a community.
It also strengthened my understanding that successful change requires both patience and clarity. Schools are complex organizations with traditions, relationships, and established practices that have often developed for good reasons. Effective leaders respect those realities while helping communities move toward improvement.
Perhaps most importantly, the course reinforced that change is not an event. It is a process. The launch of an initiative is only the beginning. The real work involves communication, support, adjustment, reflection, and sustained commitment over time. Lasting improvement occurs when people understand the vision, believe in the purpose, and see themselves as part of the journey forward.
Project Zero
Do you remember in math class when a teacher would say, “Show your work”?
At the time, it often felt like an extra step. But what the teacher was really asking was, “Help me understand how you got there.”
That idea is one of the reasons Harvard’s Project Zero resonated with me so strongly. Too often in education, we focus on whether a student arrived at an answer. Project Zero asks us to look beyond the answer and examine the thinking behind it.
When students explain their reasoning, describe how they approached a problem, talk through their ideas, make connections, ask questions, or revise their thinking, we gain a much richer understanding of who they are as learners. We begin to see their strengths, misconceptions, creativity, and individual thought processes in ways that a final product alone can never reveal.
This matters because every child thinks differently. Understanding how a student thinks allows us to better support them, challenge them, and build upon their strengths. It also allows students to learn from one another. When thinking becomes visible, students see that there are often multiple pathways to understanding. They begin to appreciate different perspectives, different problem-solving approaches, and different ways of making sense of the world.
As a leader, this has influenced the way I observe classrooms and talk with teachers. I am interested in what students are producing, but I am equally interested in how they arrived there. Are they questioning? Are they wondering? Are they making connections? Are they explaining their ideas? Are teachers creating opportunities for students to think out loud and make their learning visible?
Visible Learning
A school is a canvas.
When you walk into a school, you should immediately understand something about the people who learn there. You should see what students are studying, what they are creating, what they value, what languages they speak, what questions they are exploring, and what kind of community they are building together.
The walls should tell a story.
One of the things I love most about schools is the richness that exists when learning is made visible. A hallway can showcase student writing. A bulletin board can display scientific inquiry. A classroom door can celebrate multilingualism. A corridor can become a gallery of artwork, projects, reflections, questions, and achievements. Everywhere you look, there should be evidence of learning, growth, and life.
When student work is displayed thoughtfully, something powerful happens. Students take pride in their work because it matters beyond the moment it was completed. Teachers take pride in the learning they have guided, curated, and supported. Families gain a window into the daily life of the school community.
Visible learning creates a form of communication that is different from a newsletter, a report card, or a parent-teacher conference. Those are important forms of communication, but they offer a different experience. Walking through a school and seeing the learning for yourself allows families to experience the culture of the school firsthand.
I believe displays should be purposeful, dynamic, and regularly refreshed. They should reflect the diversity of the community, celebrate multiple forms of achievement, and showcase learning across age groups, languages, and disciplines. They should demonstrate both the process and the product of learning.
The work displayed throughout a school represents the collective efforts of students, teachers, leaders, and families. It makes learning visible and reflects the shared experiences, growth, and achievements of the community. When done well, the environment itself becomes a teacher, a celebration, and a reflection of the people who created it.
If I Built a School
Listen to the Community
Listen.
If I were building a school, the first thing I would do would not be to select a curriculum, design a campus, purchase furniture, create a marketing campaign, or decide what programs to offer.
I would listen. I would begin by asking a simple question:
What does this community need?
What kind of school do parents want for their children?
What opportunities already exist?
Where are the gaps?
What is working well?
What is missing?
What experiences do children wish they had access to?
What skills do families believe are most important for the future?
What concerns educators, healthcare professionals, business leaders, and other members of the community have about the current educational landscape?
These conversations would shape everything that follows.
Too often, schools are built in the opposite direction. A school is established, a curriculum is selected, a philosophy is written, and the community is expected to adapt to what has already been decided. Families then choose from the available options rather than helping to shape an educational experience that genuinely reflects their needs, values, and aspirations.
I believe schools should begin with listening because schools exist to serve communities.
Whether a school is public, private, international, secular, or faith-based, its purpose remains the same: to educate and support the children and families it serves. The people who live in that community are not an afterthought. They are the reason the school exists in the first place.
Most importantly, this process would not end once the school opened.
Listening is not something leaders do during a planning phase and then abandon once the doors open. It is an ongoing responsibility. Communities change. Families change. Children change. The world changes. Schools must continue asking questions, gathering feedback, and learning from the people they serve.
The strongest schools are not built for communities. They are built with them.
For me, that is where every great school begins. Not with a building. Not with a curriculum. Not with a strategic plan.
With listening.
Experiential Learning & Understanding the World
Children spend thousands of hours learning academic subjects in school while having surprisingly few opportunities to engage with the world around them in ways that are intentionally educational.
One of the most remarkable things about children is their curiosity. They want to know how things work. They want to know who makes the bread they eat, who designs the buildings they enter, who cares for animals when they are sick, who writes books, who creates inventions, and who keeps communities functioning. There is a reason books such as Richard Scarry’s What Do People Do All Day? have captivated children for generations. Children are naturally fascinated by the world around them and the people who inhabit it.
Schools should build upon that fascination.
Too often, learning becomes disconnected from life. Children learn about communities without spending time in them. They learn about professions without meeting the people behind them. They learn about systems without seeing how those systems function in practice. The result is that many students spend years learning about the world while having relatively few opportunities to experience it directly.
From the earliest years, I would bring the outside world into the school and take students out into the world as often as possible. Authors, artists, scientists, entrepreneurs, engineers, veterinarians, architects, healthcare professionals, researchers, business owners, tradespeople, and community leaders would regularly spend time with students. They would share their stories, explain their work, answer questions, discuss challenges, and help children understand how their contributions fit within the larger fabric of society.
Students would regularly leave the campus as well. They would visit bakeries, veterinary clinics, museums, farms, theatres, workshops, laboratories, libraries, gardens, businesses, universities, and community organizations. They would see mathematics in action, science at work, design taking shape, and communities functioning in real time. Learning becomes more meaningful when students can see it living and breathing around them.
One of the most valuable experiences I had as a high school student was participating in an internship. For the first time, I stepped into an environment where learning was no longer confined to assignments, assessments, and classroom discussions. I was able to observe, participate, contribute, and experience firsthand how people work together to solve problems and create something meaningful. It remains one of the most memorable educational experiences of my life because it transformed learning from something abstract into something tangible.
Experiences like that should not be rare.
As students grow older, opportunities for internships, mentorships, apprenticeships, workplace experiences, and community partnerships would become a regular part of school life. These experiences would not exist because the purpose of childhood is to rush toward adulthood. They would exist because exploration should come before commitment.
Today, many young people are expected to choose university pathways, declare majors, and take on significant financial expense while having had limited opportunities to genuinely explore the possibilities available to them. Young people deserve opportunities to discover what captures their interest, what aligns with their strengths, what excites them, and what kind of contribution they may eventually wish to make.
Most importantly, I would want students to leave school with a deep understanding of how the world around them functions.
They would understand that communities are built through relationships. They would understand that no profession exists in isolation. They would understand that every service, every business, every institution, and every organization depends upon countless people working together. They would understand that society functions because individuals with different talents, interests, skills, and passions all contribute something valuable.
Childhood is a small portion of our lives. Children should not spend those years isolated from the very world they are trying to understand. They should spend them exploring, questioning, observing, participating, and discovering.
The goal is not simply to help students decide what they want to become.
The goal is to help them understand where they are.
Life Skills, Financial Literacy, and Preparing for Real Life
A diploma is important.
But what, exactly, does it represent?
Does it represent a collection of academic subjects completed over many years, or does it represent genuine mastery of a broad range of knowledge, skills, habits, and experiences that prepare a young person to thrive in the world?
Too often, students leave school having mastered academic content while still feeling unprepared for many of the practical realities they will encounter as adults. They may be able to solve complex problems on paper while feeling uncertain about managing money, preparing nutritious meals, evaluating a contract, organizing a household, growing food, starting a business, communicating professionally, or navigating major life decisions.
We see this regularly when young adults leave home for the first time. Many arrive at university with strong academic credentials but struggle with the day-to-day realities of independent living. Managing finances, maintaining healthy routines, balancing responsibilities, making thoughtful decisions, caring for their physical and mental wellbeing, and navigating unfamiliar situations often prove far more challenging than the academic coursework itself.
Part of the reason is that education has increasingly become focused on preparing students for the next academic step rather than preparing them for life. Students move from primary school to secondary school, from secondary school to university, and from university to a career, often spending years chasing the next destination without sufficient time to explore who they are, how the world works, and what kind of life they actually want to build.
I believe education needs to slow down.
Childhood is one of the shortest stages of life, yet schools often treat it as a training ground for adulthood rather than a meaningful stage of life in its own right. From the early years through high school, students should have opportunities to develop academic knowledge, practical life skills, real-world understanding, and a deeper awareness of their strengths, interests, and aspirations. Childhood should provide room for exploration, curiosity, discovery, mistakes, growth, and joy.
The reality is that adulthood lasts a lifetime. The pressures, responsibilities, deadlines, evaluations, and expectations that accompany adult life are not going anywhere. Most adults spend decades performing, producing, meeting expectations, and fulfilling obligations. Childhood should not become a race toward those responsibilities. It should provide the foundation that allows young people to eventually meet them with confidence and competence.
This is why education should provide more than academic knowledge.
It should provide a toolkit for life.
From the earliest years, practical life skills would be woven throughout the curriculum rather than treated as occasional enrichment activities. Financial literacy would begin long before students encounter a dedicated finance course. Mathematical word problems could involve saving, spending, budgeting, investing, entrepreneurship, and real-world decision-making. As students grow older, these lessons would become increasingly sophisticated and practical.
Students would learn how bank accounts work. They would learn about budgeting, saving, compound interest, taxes, credit, debt, investing, insurance, mortgages, entrepreneurship, accounting, and business ownership. They would graduate understanding not only how money works, but how financial choices accumulate over time and influence opportunity, security, freedom, and quality of life.
Financial literacy should not begin at eighteen.
It should develop gradually over an entire childhood.
Life skills would extend far beyond finances. Students would learn cooking, nutrition, gardening, sewing, basic repairs, organization, time management, communication, public speaking, collaboration, conflict resolution, entrepreneurship, leadership, and practical household management. They would learn how to plan projects, solve everyday problems, care for their belongings, maintain shared spaces, and navigate challenges independently.
I would want students to understand how the world around them actually functions. They would explore where food comes from, how households operate, how communities depend upon one another, how businesses survive, how ideas become products, how services are delivered, and how people transform interests, talents, and skills into meaningful careers and contributions. These are not peripheral topics. They are part of understanding the society students will eventually inherit and help shape.
By the time students graduate, I would want them to leave with far more than academic qualifications. I would want them to leave with the knowledge, confidence, practical skills, and independence necessary to care for themselves, contribute to their communities, make informed decisions, adapt to change, and pursue a wide variety of futures.
Academic achievement matters deeply.
But education should also help young people build lives that are capable, meaningful, self-sufficient, and rich with possibility.
That, to me, is what a diploma should represent.
Nutrition, Health, and Food as a Way of Life
As both an educator and a nutritionist, I believe nutrition should be treated as an essential life skill rather than a topic that appears occasionally in a health class. Science should not only encompass chemistry, biology, and earth science. It should also help children understand their own bodies.
From the earliest years, students would learn about nutrition, health, hydration, herbs, and the relationship between what we consume and how we feel. They would learn that food is not simply something we eat. It affects our energy, concentration, mood, health, and ability to learn. Food is one of the most powerful tools we have for caring for ourselves.
I would want children to see healthy food the same way they see superheroes.
There is a reason Popeye has been remembered for nearly a century. Spinach became associated with strength. It made children believe that food could help them become stronger versions of themselves. We need to bring that idea back.
Children should learn that food has a purpose. Food helps us grow, think, concentrate, recover, explore, and thrive.
Broccoli is not simply broccoli. It is fuel.
Blueberries are not simply berries. They are brain food.
Watermelon is not simply a summer treat. It is hydration.
Food should become a source of curiosity rather than conflict.
I would want children to see healthy food as something beautiful. Imagine the vibrant pink of a dragon fruit, the brilliant yellow of a pineapple, the deep orange of a carrot, the rich purple of blueberries, or the bright red of strawberries. Imagine a child carrying a colorful fruit cup and thinking, “That looks amazing.”
Nature is full of color, beauty, and abundance. Children should learn that those colors are not just beautiful—they are clues. They tell us something about the nutrients, vitamins, and compounds that help our bodies function.
Food would be presented as something fascinating.
Something beautiful.
Something powerful.
Students would also learn that the natural world provides many things that help us care for our bodies. When they have a cold, what can they do? Could warm tea with lemon and ginger help soothe a sore throat? Why do people use honey? Why are certain herbs used in different cultures? As students grow older, these conversations would become more sophisticated and scientific, but they would begin with a simple idea: the earth provides many things that can help us care for ourselves.
Most importantly, students would learn to listen to their bodies.
They would learn to recognize hunger. They would learn to recognize fullness. They would learn to recognize thirst.
They would learn to ask themselves:
“What is my body telling me right now?”
Am I hungry? Am I thirsty? Am I tired? Do I need energy? Do I need rest?
Children spend years learning how to read books, but very few are taught how to read their own bodies. I would want that to change.
Students would learn about carbohydrates, proteins, fats, fiber, vitamins, minerals, and hydration in age-appropriate ways. They would learn which foods contain them and why they matter.
Older students would begin connecting nutrition to everyday decisions.
If I have an important exam this afternoon, what foods will help me focus?
If I eat a large amount of sugar, how might that affect my energy later?
Why might a complex carbohydrate paired with protein provide more sustained energy?
Why can I not live on coffee?
These would not be abstract lessons. They would be practical tools that students could use every day for the rest of their lives.
The school itself would reflect these values. There would be no soda. There would be no vending machines filled with highly processed snacks. This would be a water-only school.
Students would learn from an early age that water is essential for nearly every function of the body. Water would simply be part of the culture of the school.
Children would absolutely be welcome to bring food from home, but the expectation would be that food supports learning, concentration, health, and wellbeing.
The school would also ensure that healthy food is always available.
No child should spend hours distracted because they are hungry.
Students would have access to snacks throughout the day. There would be a snack period in the morning, lunch during the middle of the day, and another opportunity for a healthy snack before dismissal. As students leave school, they could grab a snack so they are not arriving home exhausted and starving.
Nutrition should support children throughout the entire day, not just during lunch.
Too often, healthy food is presented as boring, restrictive, or something children are expected to tolerate.
I want the opposite.
I would also want children to learn that healthy food and celebration are not opposites. During the winter months, students might make gingerbread using real ginger, cinnamon, honey, and applesauce, decorating it with yogurt frosting and raisin eyes. At other times of the year, they might bake oatmeal cookies made with honey, oats, nuts, and dried fruit. The goal would be for children to grow up understanding that food can be beautiful, delicious, celebratory, and nourishing all at the same time.
Imagine walking into the school café on a Saturday morning and seeing colorful fruit platters, fresh smoothies, homemade soups, bright salads filled with every color imaginable, and tables overflowing with foods that look as beautiful as they taste.
Imagine families spending the morning together in the library and then gathering in the café for breakfast or lunch.
Imagine children growing up with the understanding that healthy food is not something to avoid.
It is delicious. It is beautiful. It is joyful. It is part of a good life.
Research consistently suggests that children who are exposed to nutritious foods early, who understand why those foods matter, and who develop positive relationships with eating are more likely to carry those habits into adulthood.
My goal would not simply be to teach nutrition.
My goal would be to help children build a lifelong relationship with health—one rooted in knowledge, self-awareness, curiosity, joy, and the understanding that caring for their bodies is one of the greatest forms of self-respect.
Understanding Ourselves: Attention, Discipline, and the Mind
One of the greatest shortcomings of modern education is that we ask children to spend thousands of hours learning about everything except the instrument through which all learning occurs: their own minds.
Children are taught how to solve equations, analyze texts, memorize information, and complete examinations. Far less attention is devoted to helping them understand attention itself. How do we concentrate? Why do we procrastinate? What happens when we become frustrated? How do habits form? How do we recover from disappointment? How do we remain focused when something is difficult? How do we develop discipline when motivation disappears?
These questions influence every area of life. They influence learning, relationships, work, health, decision-making, and wellbeing. Yet they are often treated as secondary concerns rather than fundamental life skills.
My master’s research focused on mindfulness and education, and one of the most fascinating discoveries in this field is that attention, emotional regulation, resilience, and self-discipline are not fixed traits. They can be strengthened. They can be practiced. They can be developed.
I would want students to learn practical strategies for managing stress, directing their attention, navigating frustration, delaying gratification, developing healthy habits, and responding thoughtfully rather than impulsively. These skills would not exist as occasional assemblies or isolated lessons. They would become part of the culture of the school and woven into daily life.
The goal would never be to create perfect children.
The goal would be to help children understand that they have far more influence over their thoughts, habits, choices, and actions than they may realize.
Movement would play an equally important role.
Research consistently demonstrates powerful connections between movement and learning. Physical activity supports concentration, memory, emotional wellbeing, academic performance, creativity, and overall health. The brain is not separate from the body. They work together.
Every child in the school would participate in dance.
Not because I expect every student to become a dancer, but because dance teaches lessons that extend far beyond choreography. It develops coordination, balance, rhythm, spatial awareness, perseverance, confidence, and self-expression. More importantly, it teaches children something increasingly rare in modern life: the ability to improve gradually through consistent practice.
Progress in dance is often difficult to see from one day to the next. Students learn a movement, practice it, struggle with it, repeat it, and slowly improve. Weeks later they discover they can do something that once felt impossible. That lesson applies to mathematics, literacy, science, music, athletics, relationships, and life itself. Meaningful growth is often invisible while it is happening.
Every child would also participate in self-defense training.
The purpose would not be fighting. The purpose would be confidence, discipline, self-control, situational awareness, emotional regulation, and personal responsibility. The strongest self-defense programs teach children how to remain calm under pressure, manage their emotions, respect boundaries, resolve conflict appropriately, and carry themselves with confidence.
Students would also experience a wide variety of other forms of movement throughout their education, including outdoor education, hiking, cycling, climbing, athletics, and recreational activities that encourage challenge, exploration, and healthy risk-taking.
Most importantly, I would want children to understand a simple truth:
The ability to direct your attention, manage your emotions, build healthy habits, and persevere through difficulty influences nearly every aspect of life.
Those skills deserve a permanent place in education.
Literacy, Libraries, and the Culture of Reading
If there is one habit that predicts lifelong learning, it is a love of reading.
A child who loves reading does not stop learning when school ends. They continue learning throughout their lives because books teach them how to teach themselves. They become curious. They ask questions. They seek answers independently. Long after specific lessons are forgotten, the habit of reading continues opening doors.
That is why literacy would sit at the heart of the school.
I often hear educators talk about creating lifelong readers, but I think we spend too little time discussing how lifelong readers are actually created.
Children do not fall in love with reading because adults explain that reading is important.
They fall in love with reading because they encounter books that completely capture their imagination.
They fall in love with reading because they enter spaces that make books feel valuable.
They fall in love with reading because stories become associated with wonder, excitement, adventure, beauty, and discovery.
The library would therefore be one of the most important spaces on campus.
Not because it houses books, but because it would communicate something fundamental about the school’s values.
When children walk through its doors, I want them to feel the same sense of amazement that many people experience when they enter a truly extraordinary library for the first time. I imagine soaring bookshelves, beautiful architecture, warm lighting, reading lofts, window seats overlooking gardens, hidden alcoves tucked between shelves, comfortable chairs, quiet corners beneath canopies, and carefully designed spaces that invite children to linger. The goal is not simply to create a room where books are stored. The goal is to create an environment that makes children want to explore.
When I walk into an educational environment and feel inspired, fascinated, curious, or awestruck, I know children are likely to feel it too. Children are naturally drawn toward beauty, mystery, and discovery. Educational spaces should embrace that reality.
Books would not be confined to the library. Reading would be woven throughout the culture of the school. Children would find books in classrooms, gardens, common areas, outdoor learning spaces, reading nooks, shaded courtyards, and quiet corners designed specifically for reflection and imagination. Reading should feel like a natural part of daily life rather than an isolated academic activity.
As someone currently writing a series of children’s books, I think about this constantly. The most important question is not whether a book delivers information. The most important question is whether it captivates the child. I want children to feel completely immersed in a story. I want them to feel anticipation when they turn a page. I want them to experience the exhilaration of discovering something unexpected. I want books to feel alive.
That desire extends to the school itself.
This would not be a screen-dominated environment.
Children already spend enormous portions of their lives interacting with devices. Technology certainly has a place in modern education, but it would occupy a supporting role rather than a leading one. The school would prioritize experiences that are tactile, sensory, relational, and deeply human. Children would hold books in their hands. They would turn pages. They would examine illustrations. They would build, create, discuss, explore, question, and discover together.
Some of my earliest memories of learning began in bookstores. Every Saturday evening, my parents would take me to browse shelves for hours. I would sit on the floor in a corner reading while surrounded by thousands of stories waiting to be discovered. Those experiences taught me that books were not assignments. They were adventures.
I believe many children today have been deprived of that experience.
Schools have an opportunity to give it back.
They can create environments where books are celebrated, where curiosity is encouraged, where reading feels magical rather than mandatory, and where children come to understand that every book represents a new possibility.
A school can teach children how to read.
A truly exceptional school helps children fall in love with reading.
A Children’s World: The Physical Environment of the School
The physical environment of a school is never neutral.
Every hallway, classroom, wall, window, courtyard, garden, and gathering space communicates something to the children who spend their days there. It tells them what is valued. It tells them what matters. It tells them whether this is a place designed merely to house them or a place designed to inspire them.
I believe children deserve beauty.
Not because beautiful spaces photograph well for brochures or impress prospective families. Children deserve beauty because beauty captures attention, awakens curiosity, sparks imagination, and invites exploration. We instinctively understand this when designing spaces for adults. We build beautiful restaurants, elegant hotels, inspiring museums, magnificent libraries, and breathtaking public spaces because we recognize that environments affect how people feel.
Yet many schools are designed with remarkably little attention to wonder.
If I were designing a school from the ground up, I would begin with a simple question:
What would happen if we designed a school from a child’s perspective rather than an adult’s?
Adults have countless spaces created specifically for them. Cities are filled with offices, shops, restaurants, conference centers, apartment buildings, airports, roads, and countless environments built around adult needs and priorities.
Children have very few places that truly belong to them.
For most children, the two places where they spend the majority of their lives are home and school.
That reality should make us think carefully about what schools become.
I would want students to walk through the school gates and immediately feel that they had entered a place created specifically for them. Not an institution. Not a facility. Not a collection of classrooms. A world.
The campus itself would become part of the educational experience.
Children would follow winding pathways lined with flowers that change throughout the seasons. They would encounter gardens filled with herbs, vegetables, native plants, butterflies, birds, and pollinators. Outdoor classrooms would sit beneath shaded canopies. Reading gardens would provide quiet spaces for reflection. Treehouses, observation decks, nature trails, and exploration areas would encourage discovery and imaginative play.
Living systems would be visible everywhere.
Ponds filled with fish and lotus plants.
Frogs resting among reeds.
Birds building nests.
Butterflies moving between flowers.
Seasonal gardens changing throughout the year.
Children would not merely read about life cycles in textbooks. They would witness them unfolding around them every day.
A caterpillar becoming a butterfly.
A seed becoming a flower.
A frog emerging from a tadpole.
The changing colors of autumn leaves.
The first blossoms of spring.
The natural world would not be something students occasionally study. It would be something they live alongside.
I would also want the campus to reward curiosity.
One of the things children do naturally is notice details that adults often overlook. They stop. They observe. They ask questions. They discover connections. The environment should encourage that instinct rather than suppress it.
Perhaps there is a hidden reading nook tucked beneath a staircase.
Perhaps a sculpture contains details children discover months later.
Perhaps a garden changes dramatically from season to season.
Perhaps an observation window allows students to watch birds, insects, fish, or other living creatures.
The school should feel like a place that continues revealing itself over time.
The library would serve as the heart of that world.
Not simply a room containing books, but one of the most beautiful and inspiring spaces on campus. A place children enter with the same sense of excitement that many people feel when stepping into a magnificent historic library, grand cathedral, museum, or theatre for the first time. A place that immediately communicates that stories matter, ideas matter, and curiosity matters.
The emotional experience is important.
When a child visits an aquarium for the first time, they feel wonder.
When they visit a magnificent museum, they feel wonder.
When they enter a breathtaking library, they feel wonder.
Schools should not be exempt from that standard.
Children deserve environments that inspire them.
The school would also remain alive beyond the traditional school day. On Saturdays, families could gather in the library, visit the café, participate in community events, attend workshops, explore the gardens, or simply spend time together. The school would become a genuine community space rather than a building that sits empty when classes are not in session.
Most importantly, I would want children to feel that this place belongs to them.
That every garden, pathway, reading nook, treehouse, pond, workshop, library shelf, and outdoor classroom was created with them in mind.
Because childhood is not preparation for life.
Childhood is part of life.
If children spend thousands of hours in school, then those hours should unfold in an environment that is beautiful, inspiring, intellectually stimulating, and deeply respectful of the people who inhabit it.
A school should not simply be a place where children learn about the world.
For a time, it should become a world of its own. This is one of the ways that we show deep reverence and respect for childhood.
The Grown Ups
Every school has a philosophy.
Every school has a curriculum.
Every school has programs, initiatives, frameworks, strategic plans, and carefully written mission statements.
None of those things teach children.
People do.
At the end of the day, the quality of a school will always come down to the quality of the adults inside it.
When hiring, I would not be looking primarily for people who are attracted to prestige, rankings, reputation, tier classifications, or the name on the front gate. Those things may matter to adults, but they mean very little to a child sitting in a classroom.
I would be looking for people who genuinely enjoy children.
People who respect children.
People who are deeply knowledgeable in their fields and continuously working to improve their craft.
People who understand that education is both an intellectual and human profession.
The most brilliant physicist in the world is not necessarily an excellent teacher. Likewise, someone with endless enthusiasm but little expertise does children no favors either. Students deserve both. They deserve adults who are highly competent and deeply caring.
I would want teachers who believe childhood matters.
Teachers who understand that education is not simply about delivering content. It is about helping a young person develop confidence, character, judgment, curiosity, resilience, knowledge, and a sense of possibility about their future.
I would want teachers who see the child in front of them before they see a grade level, a test score, a report card, or a university placement statistic.
I would want teachers who are fascinated by learning themselves.
Children notice authenticity immediately. If the adults around them are curious, engaged, passionate, and continuously learning, that culture becomes contagious. A school filled with lifelong learners is one of the most powerful educational environments imaginable.
Most importantly, I would want adults who understand that they are building something larger than themselves.
A child may forget a particular lesson.
They may forget an assignment.
They may forget the details of a unit they studied years ago.
They rarely forget how a teacher made them feel.
They remember the teacher who believed in them when they doubted themselves.
They remember the teacher who noticed their strengths.
They remember the teacher who helped them through a difficult period.
They remember the teacher who sparked an interest that stayed with them for life.
Those moments often become part of a person’s story long after graduation.
The adults in a school set the tone for everything else. They determine whether a school feels joyful or joyless, welcoming or intimidating, inspiring or uninspiring. They shape the culture that children experience every day.
For that reason, I would invest as much thought into the people as I would into the curriculum, the campus, the programs, or the facilities.
Buildings matter.
Resources matter.
Programs matter.
People matter most.
When children look back on their school years decades later, I want them to remember extraordinary adults who helped them become the people they were capable of becoming.