BRING ME IN

I’ll tell them the truth.

If your audience is tired of hearing education discussed by people who left the classroom years ago, bring in someone who stayed. I haven’t spoken from a conference stage. I’ve stood in front of thirty adolescents every day for sixteen years, and told the truth in three books the system would rather I hadn’t written.

WHAT I BRING

The classroom, unsoftened. What does the job do to educators and who does it: toxic colleagues, administrators who manage up while the building burns, and procedure dressed up as care that often fails the people it is meant to protect. The story of one due-process case, and what it teaches every educator about the record being kept on them. And the through-line of all of it: how to stay standing in the room.

WHO IT’S FOR

New-teacher programs and induction. Educator associations and union locals. Schools of education, and education-law and policy programs. Professional development that wants candor instead of a brochure. Podcasts and interviews.

THE HONEST PART

I’m new to the speaking circuit. What I bring isn’t a polished keynote repeated a hundred times. It’s lived experience, carefully documented, honestly told, and grounded in what actually happens inside the classroom.

SPEAKING TOPICS

Preparation

THE REALITY GAP

Why teacher preparation is only the beginning, and what the distance between training and the job costs new educators.
Audience leaves with: a clear-eyed picture of the preparation-to-practice gap, and how to start closing it.
Culture

THE HIDDEN CURRICULUM OF SCHOOL CULTURE

What school culture teaches without ever saying it out loud: the unwritten rules educators absorb on the job.
Audience leaves with: language for the culture they’re already living, and why naming it matters.
Accountability

LEADERSHIP, SILENCE, AND ACCOUNTABILITY

What happens when institutions fail to listen, and what genuine accountability requires.
Audience leaves with: away to recognize institutional silence and interrupt it.
Culture / Accountability

WHEN PROCEDURE REPLACES CONVERSATION

What happens when an institution follows every step but never stops to listen? How policies, documentation, and formal processes can become substitutes for judgment, communication, and care, and what educators lose when they do.
Audience leaves with: the ability to recognize when “following procedure” has become an excuse for avoiding accountability.