A practitioner first. A researcher always learning.

My career began in secondary mathematics classrooms and has expanded into PreK–12 administration, instructional coaching, curriculum direction, graduate instruction, and college and university teacher preparation. Across those experiences, I have remained interested in one central question: how do educational systems create the conditions for educators—and the learners they serve—to grow?

Rural communities in Alaska and Minnesota have been especially formative. Working where school roles, relationships, community priorities, and resources intersect has shaped how I understand leadership and educational improvement. Those experiences inform the questions I ask as a researcher and the experiences I create for my university students.

Today, I serve in instructional coaching and community education at Cook County Schools in Grand Marais, Minnesota, while teaching secondary mathematics methods at the College of St. Scholastica. I am pursuing my Ed.D. in Educational Leadership, with anticipated completion in May 2027.

My aim is to contribute to higher education through teaching, mentoring, applied research, and partnerships that connect institutions with the communities they serve.

Beyond the Observation

Formal study title: The Experiences of Teachers in Rural Schools with Feedback from Formative Observations by School Leaders.

This qualitative study explores how teachers in one rural school district experience, interpret, and respond to feedback following formative classroom observations. It examines the perspectives teachers bring to feedback and the conditions under which feedback contributes to reflection and professional growth.

Using descriptive phenomenology and inductively oriented thematic analysis, I sought to stay close to teachers' lived experiences while identifying meaningful patterns across their accounts.

The findings suggest that feedback is not simply information delivered by an observer. Teachers actively interpret it in light of relationships, professional priorities, classroom realities, and opportunities for dialogue.

Learning is active. Feedback is a conversation.

I approach teacher preparation as a bridge between theory and the decisions educators make in real classrooms. I want teacher candidates to question assumptions, examine evidence, experience ambitious instruction, and build the professional judgment needed to serve diverse learners.

My higher education courses incorporate collaborative tasks, multiple representations, analysis of teaching cases, reflection, and discussion. Just as importantly, I try to make feedback useful and reciprocal so learners can make informed decisions about their own development.

Having taught in rural settings and held administrative and coaching roles, I bring examples from complex everyday school experiences while encouraging candidates to examine how context affects instructional choices.

Local roots. Broad relevance.

Rural schools are often discussed through the language of distance and scarcity. Those pressures are real, but they do not tell the whole story. Small schools can also demonstrate deep community connections, flexibility, intergenerational relationships, and a strong sense of shared purpose.

My experiences across Alaska and northern Minnesota have taught me that effective educational leadership must account for place. Staff may hold several roles, professional and personal relationships may overlap, and access to specialized resources may differ from larger systems. Solutions need to be built with educators and communities rather than simply imported from elsewhere.

These experiences also shape my commitment to rural higher education, teacher preparation, school–higher education partnerships, and research that takes educators' perspectives seriously.