I’m a former middle school literacy teacher and instructional leader with more than 15 years of experience helping students, teachers, and school teams do stronger work with complex text.

I began teaching sixth-grade English in New Orleans in 2008, and what first seemed like a short-term career stop quickly became the work that shaped my life.

After five transformative years in New Orleans, I returned home to Denver and spent 12 years as a teacher and instructional coach at DSST: Byers (now Cedar).

Today, I help schools and districts make literacy instruction more coherent, rigorous, and consistent across classrooms through professional learning, leadership coaching, text-centered data cycles, close reading, annotation, independent reading, and curriculum implementation.

I also write at The Middle School Literacy Project, where I explore complex text, classroom culture, reading data, curriculum implementation, and the conditions that help students grow and thrive as readers, thinkers, and full participants in the world of ideas.