About
I remember my first summer just before starting as a 7th grade teacher in Houston. I had heard I should get to know “more” about my students before the start of school, so I sat on the floor of the school counselor’s office, surrounded by folders and printouts of grades and test scores. I spent a lot of energy getting exhausted, but not actually learning a lot. This was just before the general rise of standards-based accountability. Eventually, we teachers would get computerized access to student data. Although I certainly remember delving into data for my current students and later seeing their gains, what I really remember is the ache of seeing data from my former students now in 8th grade. What was going on in those other classrooms such that they were no longer flourishing?
This ache would stay with me even as I became a school administrator. Eventually, I admitted that getting a cell phone might be a nice convenience. In fact, in the fashion of some administrators from the early 2000s, my belt was studded with not only a phone, but also a PalmPilot and Nextel radio. And, as someone who dealt with discipline issues every day, I carried in my hand a radio for the campus police. In a subtle way, every time I had to hike my pants back up, I knew that something odd was happening in schools when it came to technology.
When it comes to technology and schools, I’ve never stopped wondering what the heck is going on, where we are all going, and what kinds of knowledge sharing actually benefit students and schools. These questions structured the arc of my research, leading me to explore new technologies as they emerged, including not only student data systems, but also social media, one-to-one devices, and classroom management and communication platforms, like ClassDojo. All of this is about not only what it means to be a leader, but what it means to be human, in the digital age.
Now my work on artificial intelligence in education is the newest chapter of an old question.
Before academia
I began teaching through Teach for America and was a National Writing Project Fellow. My M.Ed. came through the University of Houston’s Title III Urban Principals Program. I later earned my Ph.D. in educational policy and planning at the University of Texas at Austin, where I also served on the legislative staff of a Texas senator, developing and negotiating state policies affecting higher education.
Today
I’m an associate professor of educational leadership at Boston College’s Lynch School of Education and Human Development, where I direct its Ed.D. program in educational leadership. I serve as associate editor for the Journal of Professional Capital and Community, assistant editor for Educational Policy, and on editorial boards including Teachers College Record. I’m also co-author of Supervision: A Redefinition (9th ed.) with Thomas J. Sergiovanni and Robert J. Starratt.
My research has received outstanding research awards from AERA Division H, the Organizational Theory SIG, and the Classroom Management SIG.
As a first-generation college student, I’m committed to broadening access to mentorship and to questions of human flourishing amid rapid technological change. I also co-facilitate the Mindful Leadership Circle, a community supporting the wellbeing of educators across K–12 and higher education.