I’m thrilled to be joining the Ed-Fi Community and taking up the work on the Teacher Prep Data Model that Nancy Smith and many others helped to pioneer. By background I am an educator and a researcher, and I am passionate about this field of study. Specifically, I know the value and impact that quality education has on the central question of equity in our society and I know that the most effective and powerful agent to impact learning is the teacher. Which is why teacher prep programs are so important and desperately need connected data to develop successful teachers.
Over the course of my career I have been committed to serving teacher candidates, in-service teachers and leaders, and faculty. Much of my work has been in supporting educators by empowering them to create collaborative cultures of inquiry and use quality data to inform improvement.
How I came to this work?
I have taught both in the US and in Australia, in elementary and university settings. Early in my teaching career I was confronted with the disparity of quality education that existed between students I taught in schools marked “at–risk”, and students attending surrounding schools that were well-resourced. From these experiences, I became dedicated to helping to solve education inequities, and then pivoted into education research.
As the Project Director of Accelerating Literacy Learning at Griffith University in Australia, I led a team of researchers to enhance the quality of schooling and educational outcomes in culturally, linguistically, and socioeconomically diverse K-12 schools. Our team helped schools use quality data to inform literacy improvements in teaching and learning.
More recently, as Educator Preparations Data Coach at California State University, I worked closely with staff in various roles in educator preparation across the system and outside the system to develop and realize a shared vision for data use for program improvement.
Looking forward
These are challenging times. We continue to call on our educational community to envision how instructional best practices can be used to effectively support states, districts, and educator preparation programs with designing innovative models of teaching and learning.
I am excited to be a part of the Ed-Fi Alliance Community, where I can provide ongoing support for use of the Teacher Preparation Data Model (TPDM). My hope is that together we will expand the Ed-Fi TPP community, and that we can bring connected data to this important educational community.
I’m looking forward to connecting with you to see how I can support your teacher preparation program. If you are interested in more about me, be sure to check out my bio and connect with me via email. I’d love to hear from you.
