What Chris Brings to the Work

Chris’s work is influenced by her own transformation as an educator. She is grounded in the belief that all children and adults can learn given engaging, rigorous and relevant experiences with the appropriate amount of support. Her approach is inquiry-based and constructivist recognizing that embodying practitioner and researcher are both critical roles in one’s personal growth. She finds joy in learning, serving education, and being a partner in the work. 

As the Executive Director for Abeo School Change, Chris remains true to her roots and strives to ensure that her engagement with colleagues and clients is always human-centered. Her diverse educational experiences - teaching in preschool to post-secondary classrooms, coaching teachers, developing instructional coaches at all levels, executive coaching, developing leadership and instructional leadership teams, guiding district strategic planning, and providing professional development to educators across the country - all bring her back to her “why” and keeps her committed to the work of school transformation.

Formative Experiences

Chris identifies deeply as a teacher first and foremost. The desire to understand the art and science of teaching and learning motivated Chris to be developed as a literacy and instructional coach. Her development by The Learning Network and its leaders transformed her beliefs, knowledge, theoretical understandings, and practice - instilling the importance of the cycle of inquiry, data to drive instruction, critical reflection, collaborative dialogue and relational trust. These values thrive in Chris’s work today. Years of intensive development and critical examination of the relationship of teaching and learning as a school and district-level coach fostered her deep belief in the transformational power of education for students and adults. 

As a coach and facilitator of adult learning, Chris later built on her formative experiences with The Learning Network (TLN) by joining the Coalition of Essential Schools Northwest (CESNW) coaching cadre. The legacy of Ted Sizer and the 10 Common Principles were a natural next step in her career coaching adults. Chris’s foundation with TLN was strengthened by her engagement with CES colleagues and clients. Her key takeaways from her experience thus far: engage in learning that challenges oneself to take risks in service of students; develop the will to ask hard questions; be a researcher into your practice; recognize that the system needs to be leveraged to free people up to learn; see people and acknowledge what they bring to their work; and be one’s authentic self. 

Quote

This quote lives with me daily. In my early stages of development as an educator, a mentor regularly reminded me that in the work of growth and transformation…

“There is no there, there.” Marilyn Duncan