Founder

Dr. Stephanie Brenner began her teaching career seventeen years ago as a first-grade teacher.  Currently, she is a Literacy Coach in a large Missouri suburban school district. Dr. Brenner has been a trainer for Classroom Instruction That Works (CITW) and Literacy Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS), as well as facilitated numerous professional learning opportunities in reading, writing, and dyslexia for teachers and parents.  Her doctoral research focused on the impacts teacher knowledge of dyslexia has on student achievement.  As a result of her research, Dr. Brenner’s passion for providing teachers the information and knowledge needed to be responsive to students in multiple ways and settings and being an advocate for students flourished.  

Dr. Stephanie Brenner’s expertise lies in dyslexia, and reading and writing processes; phonics, progressions, instructional practices, diagnostic assessments, screeners, interventions, and communication with students and families.  She believes growing teacher knowledge through meaningful, high-quality professional learning is the best way to impact student achievement while creating life-long readers and writers.  

April Burton currently serves as the Instructional Technology Content Leader for the Francis Howell School District working with teachers PreK-12 to pair great teaching with great technology.  English teacher turned French teacher turned Tech Junkie, April’s passion is using technology to engage and innovate.  April continuously works with teachers to “think differently” about instruction and assessment.  As a firm believer in the use of tech to transform the classroom, April works diligently to connect teachers to just the right tool to partner content area goals with authentic learning.  April is an ISTE Certified Educator, a Google Certified Trainer, was recognized as the Francis Howell District Teacher of the Year, has been an METC Spotlight Educator and has been featured in several publications such as the American School Administrator's Magazine. 

Denise Colombini began her work in the field of education 19 years ago as a classroom teacher in the Chicago area. She is a National Board Certified teacher with a Masters degree in reading. Denise is currently a literacy coach in a large suburban school district in Missouri. 

Her expertise lies in helping teachers use effective instructional practices to teach reading, writing and phonics. She has coached both individuals and teams, as well as facilitated numerous professional development opportunities. Her work with teachers has focused on unwrapping curriculum to plan for instruction, using assessment to guide next steps, and planning explicit small groups to meet the needs of each individual learner. Denise has also worked with teachers to administer screeners and diagnostics and implement interventions while monitoring student progress along the way.

Her passion is to share her knowledge with other educators to provide access to high quality literacy instruction for all students.

 Dr. Kallie Dace started her career in education in 2007 as a classroom teacher in elementary and middle school classrooms specializing in reading and math. Dr. Dace returned to school to earn a master's degree in reading. Kallie enjoyed the learning so much she moved into a reading and math specialist role for her district. In this role, she supported teacher teams through modeling lessons, planning lessons, and supporting interventions for students. In this role, she was able to support teachers in a way that Increased high-stakes assessment scores by 12%!

Dr. Dace returned to school to earn her Doctorate in Education, specializing in curriculum design.  She has spent the last eight years as an instructional coach. In this role, she moved from focusing on reading and math to all content areas and behavior supports. Dr. Dace brings an energy and excitement in all she does to support educators! 

Dr. John Duvall currently serves as a coordinator for secondary ELA, social studies, and reading in a large suburban school district. He has served in public school education for close to two decades starting his career in the classroom as a social studies teacher. Dr. Duvall understood the importance of literacy in all content areas and studied literacy as a focus for his masters. It was then he adding teaching ELA in middle school. 

John is passionate about learning! He believes high-quality professional development partnered with coaching creates a win-win situation for all stakeholders. He has extensive experience with disciplinary literacy, the workshop model, and developing lab sites for learning. 

Dr. Stephanie Evans is an award winning classroom teacher, district professional development leader and educational consultant specializing in math instruction. She has taught for over twenty years across grades K-8 conducting action research in the area of mathematics. Stephanie is a National Board Certified teacher with a Bachelor of Science degree in Elementary Education, a Masters degree in Instructional and Curricular Studies, and is in the final stages of completing her doctoral degree in Teacher Leadership.  A passion of hers is using her wealth of knowledge and experience to assist teachers and coaches to plan, implement, and reflect on student-centered, mathematically rich lessons focused on critical thinking; gain the expertise needed to provide equitable math instruction; increase number sense and reasoning in students; and equip students with the skills needed to be mathematically proficient.  She believes that teachers can be the catalyst for change by leading and advocating for high quality mathematics teaching and learning for children.   

 Dr. Natalie Fallert began her teaching career over twenty years ago as a high school English, Speech, and Theater teacher. Throughout her time as a classroom teacher, Natalie took on leadership roles in curriculum writing, PLCs, professional development, and teacher union organizations. Her passion for building teacher leaders led her from the classroom to become a district-level 6-12 literacy coordinator where she served 200 teachers, 12,000 students, and 11 buildings. Dr. Fallert has attended multiple learning institutes through Columbia University's Teachers College and The Reading and Writing Project around workshop model in the secondary classroom. In her curriculum and professional development work she has trained in and utilized knowledge from Adaptive Schools, Cognitive Coaching, Marzano's High Reliability Schools Critical Concepts, and Solution Tree's RTI at Work.  Dr. Fallert also has a unique understanding of school governance as she served as a school board member with Advanced Board Member Certification. 

She works closely with classroom teachers, principals, and district administrators navigating educators to push beyond comfortable traditional pedagogy and wade, tread or dive into best instructional strategies and assessment practices. In recent years, Natalie has focused on developing diverse and equitable curriculum, lessons, and professional development using the workshop model in the secondary classroom. She also spent a large portion of the 2020 Pandemic researching, building, leading the development of, and implementing online course content for both synchronous and asynchronous classrooms using a learning management system and embedding best instructional approaches for an online learner. 

Declan FitzPatrick has served school districts in the St. Louis area in curriculum assessment and instruction since 2005. He is an experienced curriculum designer and professional development facilitator. He has expertise in building a guaranteed and viable curriculum, supporting teacher collaboration, assessment design, and content area reading and writing. He is the author of two articles about differentiating instruction in secondary English Language Arts: “Constructing Complexity” (English Journal, Nov. 2008) and  “Reading Level Response” in Reflective Teaching, Reflective Learning (Heinemann 2005). He holds an MAT English from the University of Chicago, and BA from Washington University in St. Louis. 

 Through instructional coaching work and as a classroom teacher, Jen has successfully implemented and supported both comprehensive and structured literacy frameworks with elementary grade level classrooms. Through her Master’s program and literacy coaching, she has had training opportunities through TCRWP, Comprehensive Intervention Model, PLC, Student-Centered Coaching, and more. Her decade of experience is teaching in various elementary grade levels and as an Instructional Coach have both involved a heavy literacy focus and implementation of a Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum. Jen has supported teams in collaboration utilizing the PLC model, modeled and coached literacy components and structures, and provided professional learning on Phonics and Word Study, Guided Reading, Writer’s Workshop, Reader’s Workshop, and the Math Workshop model. Her major beliefs lie in meaningful collaboration, research-based best practices, a strong MTSS system, and utilizing high quality professional learning to impact teacher instruction and student achievement.

Betsy Rivas is passionate about learning as a transformative process and has led institutional changes with improved student learning outcomes for nearly two decades. While her experience spans secondary and higher public education as a classroom teacher, instructional leader, response to intervention influencer, and director of professional development she is first and foremost a teacher.

Betsy’s expertise includes developing effective professional learning experiences for teaching and student services staff, curriculum and assessment design, program innovation, and creating comprehensive progress monitoring and intervention systems for secondary and higher education settings. She holds masters degrees in management and organizational behavior, teaching, and education leadership of which her thesis was centered on goal setting among academically at-risk adolescents.

With a unique background in private and public sectors, Betsy has a proven record of leading collaborative teams to achieve organizational strategic objectives. She believes that student success is a shared responsibility and creating a culture of collaboration where students receive proactive, intentional, and differentiated guidance is key to advancing student learning outcomes.

 Caroline Brockhaus started her journey in education as a Middle School Social Studies teacher in the city of St. Louis. Caroline transformed the Social Studies department towards a cross-curricular model with a greater emphasis in literacy & 21st century skills. She believes that real-world application & fostering inherent curiosity are foundational skills for high quality learning in the classroom. 

Caroline actively studies the effectiveness of explicit & implicit teaching of 21st century skills as well as organic methods of teaching literacy in the Social Studies classroom. Her passions lie with having courageous conversations in the classroom & highlighting culturally responsive history. She is enthusiastic about empowering teachers to get creative & take risks.