Cohort 2010
Student Profiles
Cohort 2010
Tamara Blake-Canty has worked in education for 12 years. She is currently a principal at the William E. Russell Elementary school in Boston. She is interested in the relationship between socioeconomic status, school policy, race, culture, language and the achievement gap.
Kate Carbone is the Chief Academic Officer for the Triton Regional School District. She is interested in teacher collaboration, teacher leadership, school turn-around, and tiered instruction models.
Avril dePagter is a teacher for students with special needs at the William H. Lincoln School in Brookline, MA. She is currently directing an afterschool program for Grade 6-8 students. Her research interests are: the experiences of urban learners in special education, and the overrepresentation of urban learners in special education programs.
Nicholas Fitzgerald is an English teacher in Milton High School. He is interested in the influence of ubiquitous media on adolescent literacy and how public school English curricula will adapt to a new generation of readers.
Chris Flieger is an Area Superintendent for the Catholic Schools Office of the Archdiocese of Boston. He taught high school history for six years and holds a principal certification. His research interests are public/private partnerships, values-based education, and the use of standardized tests results to inform instruction.
Samantha Meier is a Vice Principal at Revere High School. Her researcher interests are: alternative schedules/ trimesters, science education/ELL, science/Math integration.
Mary A. Mitchell is an ESL science teacher in Lynn English High School. Her research interests are: ELLs and high-stakes testing, gender in relation to culture and assessment, development of academic vocabulary, socio-economic issues in urban education.
Kerry Mulcahy is a 10th grade English Language Arts teacher in the Worcester Public Schools. Her research interests are: educational policy, small learning communities, sheltered English instruction, literacy, unfunded federal mandates, how policy trickles down on the municipal level.
Cindie Nielson is the Assistant Director of Student Service PreK-5 in Norwood, MA. Her research interests are: inclusion and its impact on the school community, RTI implementation, creation and reauthorization of special education laws and the impact on school climate.
Nadine O’Garro is a middle school (7th grade) mathematics teacher at the Richard D. Murphy School in Boston. She is interested in the impact of school culture on classrooms (teachers and families) as well as families and the community. In the future, she aims to open her own school, The Academy of Practical Application, which will be a model school that will revolutionize urban education.
Elizabeth Paulsen has taught ESL in three countries to learners of all ages for the past 8 years. Currently, she is an elementary ESL teacher at the Boston Renaissance Charter Public School in Hyde Park. Throughout graduate school, she served as my professors' research assistant and has recently developed a framework for positive youth development (PYD) for New York City's District 79's learners centered around social and emotional learning and character education. Her research interests include issues surrounding where identity and second language acquisition intersect. One particular area she plans to pursue is the motivation surrounding immigrant families’ development of biliteracy in urban communities.
Kirsti Salmi is a School Adjustment Counselor and Assistant Principal at the Fanning Learning Center in Worchester, MA. She is interested in learning more about the effectiveness of alternative education versus smaller inclusive communities within larger schools.
Jessica Stephens is an 8th grade language arts teacher at KIPP Academy in Lynn, MA. She is interested in professional development and teacher preparation for urban teachers, resiliency building, styles of communication and student learning, charter schools in urban settings.
Kimberly Talbot is a Spanish teacher at Revere High School. She is interested in technology, 21st century skills, faculty buy-in and implementation, and sociolinguistics.
